Where have all the Yankees gone?
by Alternative NonFiction
Summary: Long ago, those selected for admission to Vault 111 were frozen with the end of the world. Now they have been rudely awakened from two centuries of slumber to face the wasteland. For their very existence, the Commonwealth will bleed as their actions draw in the best and the worst elements of the Eastern Seaboard; all in the name of making their America great again. Canon divergence
1. Prologue

**Author's Note: Considering how many stories I've seen floating about where ONE or TWO other people survive Vault 111, I'm actually surprised I haven't run into any stories where the rest of the participants survive. That being said, expect some canon divergence with the AU due to the interference of multiple prewar OCs, loose ends from other Fallout iterations, and even plain old logic and shit.**

 **Rated M for covering the things you would find in the Fallout Universe, and my imagination.**

 **Special thanks to Pro Assassin for agreeing to beta for this story.**

 **Prologue**

* * *

"What took so you so long, and where's Glory?" A familiar voice asked her from the other side of the service entrance.

"She'll be down here in a minute, Deeks. It's getting nastier up there, but at least stealth comes easier. Where's Tom?"

"Right over here, Professor." Another man chimed in from behind the foggy plexiglass of a rad suit. "I wouldn't miss this for anything."

"Nor would I Tom," came the voice of Glory from above. With a grace one would not expect from a heavy, she quietly slipped down to meet them in several layers of bulletproof clothing and a fucking 80 pound pack.

"Alright, we got about a half hour before shit hits the fan. There's only a small picket around every other way down and of course there's the other demolition teams setting up their little staging ground. They won't look at you too hard if you follow me down the tunnel. Once zero hour happens though, that might change. Thankfully, we should be deep in the maze by then." He gestured for them to follow.

By the top of the hour, at 22:00, all hell would break loose beneath the mask of a blizzard on Christmas Eve. All those soldiers hiding above ground would emerge from their posts, and rush for the tunnels amid radio silence. By the time anybody else caught on, they would be deep in the labyrinth of their greatest enemy.

Regime leadership called it Operation Trenton behind closed doors. Under the cover of a Nor' Easter, the supreme will of the Commonwealth had jockeyed into positions all over the campus in great secrecy. And now, they were growing restless.

Riverboats floated down the icy waters of the Charles, making a dozen different stops, and playing vicious mind games with anyone brave enough to be within earshot on a night like this. As a general rule, you didn't even get to figure out which side of the river the death squads were on until you heard the songs of battle and if it was enough of a surprise, you could probably rule out the Brotherhood when following the stench of burning flesh.

The Brotherhood of Steel were known to send birds out sometimes on clearer nights like giant metal rad buzzards. Officially, they were allies, with a vested interest in seeing Cambridge purged of monsters (at least the less politically adept ones.) Unofficially, they had become territorial motherfuckers after Saugus, just like everybody else here was. "Contractors" from Easy City were known to show up on occasion and strip whole places of anything that could be recycled into the Brotherhood's war machine. And of course, behind all the mutual gestures of friendship, there was bad blood between leaders.

She had a feeling things were going to get hairy when the storm passed and the skies finally cleared. The landscape of Boston could very well change overnight, and whatever happened would likely result in a mountain of bodies.

"Your team?" barked an unpleasant voice up ahead from the shadows.

"My team, sir" Replied Deacon without skipping a beat. "Just came in from the cold, and ready to set up the charges."

"Get to it sergeant," the figure waved him off.

They passed by the checkpoint without any further challenges or even second glances.

Further down the sewer, they could see a handful of men huddled close chatting among themselves.

"Do you actually think the Institute can pick up heat down here?" A man with a heavy French Acadian accent anxiously asked while rubbing his hands together.

"Wouldn't surprise me, Jacques. Ever hear the old tales of the Institute?"

"What, like Broken Mask?" asked another.

"No, I mean like before that. When our world was new. I heard a few whispers back when I was a Gunner, but every story seems to disagree with the others."

"I'm still kind of new to the area, I haven't heard many of the old tales."

The ex gunner laughed. "They have become the stuff of myths. Invisible watchers who control all that happens in the Commonwealth from secret bunkers. Some say their shadowy hand goes as far west as the Pitt."

"What do you believe?"

"After the beginning, the creation, when various remnants of the pre-war government still dominated the new settlements in the wasteland, they walked among us as mortal men. There was relative stability for a time among what remained of our race as long as we had a hope to rebuild. But the old shepherds died off one by one. Their flocks ran off, started turning on each other. The towns, the tribes, the clans, all of them started going to war with each other when they couldn't find the resources they wanted. Somewhere in the chaos, the simply Institute just vanished one day, they say. Even many of the ghouls forget about them now, but that of course hasn't kept them from living. On the contrary don't you see? They are all around us. Their eyes and ears are everywhere."

"Why did they hide?" Asked Jacques the Acadian.

"Because Jacques, even in a world of mutants that threaten man's natural spot on the food chain, humans are still the greatest monsters of all. We rejected them and ever since they disappeared they have evolved differently than us. They sought godhood, and the gods are creatures of a new order whose logic is alien to us."

"So now we seek to find where the gods live?"

"Do you know any better ways to attain god hood?" asked the ex-gunner amused.

She tuned out the rest of the conversation as they went further down the tunnel to the direction of the designated site, not even a thousand feet from where the radio signal had been triangulated.

"How much time we got?" Deacon had asked her once they arrived at a suspiciously new looking wall of bricks (new meaning it looked decades old instead of centuries). He was donning a hazmat suit not unlike the ones that R & D specialists wore out in the field, as Tom started setting the charges. The man was already planning the next hour's worth of moves in his head.

She checked the time on the Pip-Boy mounted around her wrist. It was 9:42 PM. Whether they had too much time or too little she could not say, as the rest of the crew donned their protective gear.

"Eighteen minutes till shit gets real down here," she reminded the rest of her group.

They had one chance to snatch their prize in the Institute before a winner was declared in the race.

 _Lord, how did it come to this?_

* * *

"Manual Override initiated. Cryogenic stasis suspended," the automated announcement carried through the cold air; air that seemed to penetrate his containment suit and bite away with its invisible teeth.

"Vault computers are still working, that's good. Checking through the logs, hopefully, it's all..." Adam voiced his thoughts, for Lana Orman who represented Robotics, and for Conrad Kellogg, who represented both himself and the old man. Squinting at the array on the screen, he analyzed the list, and found what would probably be the best choice. "Pod C6, down the hall near the end." Adam jabbed his index finger at the end of the hallway.

They made their way in that direction, Lana and Kellogg.

"This is the one, here." Lana found the pod and pointed to it so that Adam could also it see from where he stood.

"Open it," Kellogg ordered in his usual gruff voice. He drew his pistol, no doubt expecting the inhabitants of the pod to fight him upon release.

The Doctor quietly obeyed the order and pulled what had to be the handle for the manual override. The pod door opened upwards with a hiss.

As the wheezing of the human refrigerator subsided, he could hear coughing and the soft cries of an infant. When the coughing ended, the voice of a young woman - maybe a few years older than Lana, spoke up, "Is it over? Are we okay?"

"Almost." Kellogg motioned for her to stay where she was. "Everything's going to be fine."

"Come here... Come here, baby," Lana cooed the words as she cheerfully moved in for the subject.

"No wait, I got him!" The mother's tone went from groggy and confused to defensive and terrified. He could see Lana struggling to grab the baby whose cries were louder for the obvious reasons.

Kellogg raised his right arm, and calmly levelled that .44 revolver of his at the woman in the pod, in a manner that made Adam downright uncomfortable.

"Let the boy go. I'm only gonna tell you once." Kellogg pulled back the hammer.

"I'm not giving you Shaun!" She did not back down. Then again, she could never have known who she was dealing with.

Kellogg's gun spoke with a roar which reverberated through the hall.

Adam put his hands around his ears in agony. The report of the gunshot in the narrow passage, was louder than anything he'd heard in his life. All the sounds in the room seemed to blend together into a confused hum that bore into his eardrums with a fury. When he looked back at the scene, Lana was holding the baby in her arms. Kellogg was saying something, probably profane wastelander slang as he pointed his smoking gun towards the floor. Lana walked back up the hall with the bundle in her arms.

Kellogg took a moment to holster his weapon and then took a moment to study the pod across from C6. It was a long moment before Kellogg turned to follow Lana.

After what seemed like minutes, Adam recovered his senses and the confused hum diminished.

"What's the hold up?" The wastelander snarled.

"I'm almost finished, Kellogg... Give me a moment." Adam Thompson turned away and took a deep breath. He switched from the spreadsheet layout to the command line interface. After a few keystrokes, he stopped for a moment.

Right now, the power of life and death was in his hands. It was not just one individual, but entire families. There were enough people in the pods to fix the gene pool which would become a problem in a couple generations.

Sure, they recruited an outsider now and then when they happened to have an interesting skill. Though the directorate would never admit it, the Institute's gene pool would soon be getting shallow without the occasional fresh and tainted blood. Almost as loath to admit as the fact that there was no truly untainted except possibly those in the pods. He had not been directly ordered to let them die of asphyxiation which would happen if he did not refreeze them, but the Director considered the need for secrecy more important than human lives. Especially ones who cared nothing for the Institute.

On the other hand, his direct boss would not mind access to additional unmutated genetic material. Maybe even a young woman of breeding age once the old man passed, and was succeeded by someone with the simple mindset of a scientist or an engineer rather than a paranoid security hawk. Even Zimmer that insufferable prodigy from security, would be a better choice all things considered.

If he was honest with himself though, enough people died today.

He unplugged the cable and adapter from the computer, and tucked them into the storage compartment beneath his wrist. It was one of the older unpolished models, one that had been produced by Vault-Tec and had to undergo a heavy-duty overhaul to suit Institute needs. Needs such as the inclusion of a relay chip set among other things.

With his first command, he muted the speakers. With the next, he rebooted the cryogenic sequence.

"Alright, there's confirmation. Let's go." Adam hastily left the computer in hopes that neither noticed what he did.

Kellogg nodded and led the way out of the vault.

Nobody spoke as they navigated the passages of the Vault. At one point, he checked the Pip-boy on his wrist. They would have to surface long enough to catch the signal before they could relay in.

They passed by what had to be the main office for the vault. Behind a desk, a lone skeleton in a Vault-Tec lab coat sat in a well-preserved armchair. Lana asked for a moment to cover the baby in protective gear.

"You'll want him to have as little exposure to the world of everyone else," Kellogg nodded. "Take a minute, or two. Mr. Thompson and I will wait."

They watched her duck into the private quarters behind the office. When she had disappeared, Kellogg turned to face him and took a few steps closer. "Care to tell me why you did it?" His voice was low.

"Did what?" Adam asked defensively, but there was no use in playing dumb.

"The dwellers, egghead. Why'd you refreeze them all?"

"Why not refreeze them?" Adam returned in a voice barely more than a whisper. "They're not going anywhere. What's the harm in leaving them as we found them?"

"The Director will not be happy if he finds out."

Adam wasn't going to make any pleas to decency, or explain his conscience to somebody who committed murder for trivial things like caps for pre-war beverages. No, he would only use words that the filthy mercenary would understand. "Neither will Bio science if they find out we disposed of perfectly good genetic material."

"You're loyal to your directorate, but not so much your leader. I understand, I really do." The bald man looked at him curiously. "Problem is, I take orders from whoever sits in the Director's office."

Adam saw an opening that Kellogg would probably take. "But what of his successor? Even his cronies in security and robotics are eager for a leader who doesn't see enemies around every corner. Besides," he added, "what if he needs backup material?"

By the look on Conrad Kellogg's face, he seemed convinced. "Fair point," Kellogg conceded. "Very well, we will not speak of this unless the need for backup arises."

"Agreed." Adam reluctantly nodded.

* * *

The first thought that came to mind, was that time in high school when he woke up without his wisdom teeth. Except now, he was waking up in a freezer, upright. The sound of a hiss came from every direction. The hatch popped open with a mournful groan.

James Tyrell Rodgers tried to step out of the pod and found out, a moment too late, just how sluggish he was. He didn't even have time to brace himself, before hitting the concrete floor.

A strange sensation tingled in his body, which did not feel impact like it should have. His skull was ringing as he tried to look up.

He laid there for a few moments dazed. Unable to move, unable to think. When James finally mustered the strength to do so, he found himself staring at the closed pod before him. He thought about the occupants who made his family.

His mind was still too muddled to make sense of what he had seen.

James found his footing with the help of the red handle bars on their pod. As he stood, he realized that they were no longer a bright red save for a trace of bright crimson beneath a thin layer of frost that seemed to snake around and cloud everything in the room. That was strange, he was not quite sure what to make of that little detail.

It only kept him for a moment, before he levelled his eyes towards the window of the pod. There within, he could see the disturbed outline of Jenny through the icy window.

Without even thinking, he started fumbling with a lever on the control panel that he was sure had to be the release. With a hiss, the seals on the pod were released, the door lurched forward before swinging upwards.

The first thing he noticed was a trickle of blood that ran out of the pod as the mass of foggy air dissipated leaving a horrible stench. Not even that could have prepared him for the sight. Her body was propped against the pod, her head had lolled to one side. Hazel eyes were wide open and starring at the massive bullet hole where a bullet hole the size of his thumb, marked the ruins of her heart.

Of Shaun, there was no sign. Whoever had come wanted him.

This was not happening. No fucking way.

Instinctively, he gently grabbed his wife's wrist, waiting for the throb of a pulse. None came. And that's when he noticed the color of her skin.

Jenny's face for some reason, held the pale complexion of milk. The skin of her lower arm on the other hand, held a pinker tone. How bizarre.

Suddenly, the stench was too much for him, and he jerked his head away from the scene. In doing so, he fell to his knees, and retched the contents of his stomach on the cold cement floor of the hall.

He stayed on his knees after puking his guts out. His chest was heaving with every breath in despair.

A torrent of emotions overwhelmed James. On the concrete, confusion slowly faded and in its void, terror gripped him. Jenny was gone, Shaun was missing. It felt as if the world had passed him by entirely. That was when he heard a knock down the hall.

The sound was somewhere to his right. Acting on instinct, he looked around for a weapon. His search was instantly rewarded when he found a rusted fire extinguisher.

James heard it again. Taking the weapon, he slowly moved towards its source.

After another round of tapping, he could see a hand from within a pod.

James lowered the extinguisher which shook in his hands.

He flipped the switch for the release, and the pod opened. This time, someone stepped out of the pod.

Robert Reuven landed on the hallway floor, without even stumbling. For a man whose features and somewhat round form gave the impression of a cleaned pig, he moved with the grace of a cat. "Thank you, neighbor." His voice was deep and lightly flavored with the accent of a New Yorker.

"Mister Reuven," James tersely addressed the man trying hard to kept his voice from cracking while he avoided eye contact.

"What the hell is going on?"

"Hell, if I know." His voice failed him.

Robert's eyes were all over the place, and settled on the scene behind him. "It was Jenny wasn't it?"

He nodded.

"I only caught a glimpse, but they didn't look much like Vault-Tec."

"Whoever they were, they..." All that remained of his rigid composure melted, and he struggled to continue as if saying it aloud would finally make it reality. "They stole Shaun," James finished.

The fat man shook his head. "And here I thought humanity had already hit rock bottom." He took a deep breath, and the expression on his fat jowls turned even more sour. "Fuck, I hate that smell."

Something in Reuven's mannerisms just pissed him off. Maybe it was the apparent lack of sincerity. "That would be my wife!" He snarled.

"Of course, it is. and sorry for your loss." Robert spread his arms wide as he talked, speaking almost as if he were a parent scolding a child for sulking over stupid.

Before James could respond, he heard another hand banging on glass somewhere else. Robert Reuven took notice of the noise too.

"Now if you can put that aside for a moment, let's get the rest of the neighborhood out of these death traps before the air supply runs thinner than it already is."

Though he was bothered by the man's tone, he knew Robert was right. He was never the best at reading people, but there was something about Reuven that seemed too fucking casual when it came to death.

"How'd you get me out of this thing?" He gestured towards the pod.

"The big lever," James stated quietly.

"Thanks."

The two went to work freeing the participants of Vault 111 from their pods. Reuven opened the rest of the odd numbered pods, while he brought out those in the even numbered pods on the other side of the aisle.

One by one, the inhabitants of Vault 111 minus two, left their pods. They were only coming to terms with the fate of the rest of the world, as they staggered onto the hallway with expressions that must have looked as confused as his own.

He took a moment to return to Jenny. He wanted to make his way out of the vault and find Shaun. Consequences be damned, but for some reason he felt completely lost without her. "I'll find Shaun," James chocked out the words, for once not caring about the six sets of eyes he could feel on him.

The frozen stare on her face was posed with an eternal question. Why? Those glassy, lifeless eyes stared right into his soul and seemed to remind him of the times he fell short.

Suddenly, he could not stand to look at her, and resealed the pod. He turned his eyes to the end of the hallway.

 _I will find him. I will find our boy._ James nudged his way past his neighbors, and walked through the hall. Up the stairs, he made a beeline for the next door only to find it stuck.

"Open up you piece of shit! "James banged on the unyielding metal door with his fists, still numb from the cold. He looked around for something. Anything. He had to get through the door and catch the trail. James frantically searched his surroundings, and found a ball peen hammer. He was about to try and force his way through the door, when he saw through the window...

From where he stood, he could see three pods in the room, possibly a forth.

He looked at the door for a second, and back at the glass before making his decision.

James fumbled with the door, which opened with a creak. Inside, he went to work on the pods, freeing them of the residents. Frank DiPietro was the first to be rescued. He stumbled out of the pod as if drunk, which knowing him he may very well have been. Next came the Whitfields, who left their pods with considerable grace. Then came the Kovacs, all three of them. Mother, father, daughter.

Finally, there were two other pods in the middle of the room, which looked as if they had been jury rigged to fit in the centre of the room. He released both inhabitants. The first one was Stuart Baker, a former Seabee who both dreaded and eagerly awaited the apocalypse for some fucked up reason.

The inhabitant of the last pod began banging on the glass as he approached. When his pod opened, he saw a somewhat overweight middle aged man in a Vault-Tec lab coat.

"You!" Stuart howled with rage when he saw the man. "You have some explaining to do right now!"

"Calm yourself sir, everything is going to be just fine." The man spoke with an accent that marked him as Bostonian aristocracy.

"It's not going to be fine!" James angrily replied.

"Well, things will never go back to the way they used to be, but the good thing is we're alive." He paused for just a moment and studied his surroundings. "If the condition of the room is any indication, we've been on suspension for decades at least. The worst is behind us ladies and gentlemen."

 _No_. James shook his head amid the murmurs of uncertainty.

"So what happened to your friends pal?" Frank asked over the commotion.

The man in the lab coat shrugged as he stepped down from the pod. "I don't know, but I would like a chance to find them if you may. For all I know, my services as a medical professional may yet be required." He motioned the gathered to step aside, who allowed him through unchallenged despite their clear anger.

James followed him out of the room and into the hallway.

Instead of trying the main door, the doctor went straight to a door across the hall which opened without issue. Behind them the others followed the trail.

Beyond the door, a passage snaked around various rooms clearly reserved for vault staff. On the left there were a couple offices, and on the right was a reactor room from which the vault drew power.

Near the end of the hallway he could see the entrance to the reactor room, through another nearby doorway, he saw what appeared to be a mess hall of sorts.

The portly doctor grabbed a baton left on a table within reach, and looked around the mess. Barely ten seconds had passed before he turned away disappointed, and entered the reactor room.

A walkway hugged the walls of the room, the man in front of them gestured to keep a safe distance from the reactors.

He pressed for a few steps before leaping backwards and shrieking in horror.

Suddenly, James found himself taking point. When he focused on the path before him, he could see the object of fear.

In front of him, a cockroach as long as his arm was staring at him, its antenna twitching in his direction. With some high-pitched screech, it scurried towards him.

James stumbled back and swung his hammer at the creature, hitting it in mid-air. The impact of his twelve-ounce hammer sent it flying into the wall of a reactor. It made a disgusting crunch upon contact, sending sickly green fluid in every direction.

He stared at the bug for a moment like an idiot. _What the fuck did I just kill?_

Then he saw the skeleton. It had been there for sometime, reduced to nothing but bones in a jumpsuit probably torn to pieces by flesh eating insects.

"What in God's green Earth is that?" He could hear the Frank behind him, with his voice barely louder than a whisper.

"Super-sized Cockroaches," answered the man of Vault-Tec. "Looks like they eat people."

As if to answer the man's reply, a chorus of screeches could be heard from behind a nearby door. He was no expert on animal behavior, but he was certain they were hungry.

His footsteps were heavy when he moved towards the door. He flipped the door control switch, and readied his hammer.

They came within a few seconds. James flicked the control switch and watched the door smash one of the bugs while the man in the lab coat fought off the other one with his baton.

When it was done, he could see Frank standing beside him with an adjustable wrench in hand.

James opened the door, then brought it down on the first one to attack.

This happened twice more before the screeching stopped. The next time James opened the door, there were none left to attack.

The room was a short corridor with stairs on the end. In a few strides, James reached the stairs and saw the next room.

The by the standards of the vault, this room was spacious. In the center, was a horseshoe shaped desk complete with a terminal and a comfortable looking office chair. He knew little about the layout of the vault, but it was clear that this was the office for the head honcho.

"My god," the doctor gasped upon entering the room "They actually went through with it." Behind the desk, was the skeletal corpse of a man in a lab coat just like the doctor's. It was sprawled across the floor, and held an N99 in one hand.

"They?" James asked.

"Security staff, same ones who forced me into the spare pod," the doctor explained himself as he walked around the desk, grabbed the pistol, and vetted the pockets of the coat. "When the food stores ran low, I imagine every department made a case for why they deserved it more than everybody else." He produced an access card and put in through the reader on the terminal.

"Don't imagine that ended well," Robert made his presence known at that time.

The doctor was silent for a time as he accessed the terminal. "It would seem that security got what little remained," replied the doctor. "I don't think there is much left in terms of provisions for us.

"I guess that means we leave the vault then?" James had to find Shaun, and right now no force on Earth was going to hold him back from chasing his trail.

The man took a deep breath before addressing those in the room, his voice shook with uncertainty. "By the succession protocol, I Henry Remington the III, hereby assume the duties of overseer." He made a few more keystrokes on the terminal. "The evacuation tunnel is now open. Evacuation orientation begins in five minutes."

Less than five minutes later, they all stood in the entry way shoulder to shoulder while Doctor Remington, looked them over as if going over a mental checklist. They had all been equipped as best as they could be.

Every one of them had a personal information processor, or pip-boy as it was known in Vault-Tec speak strapped to their left arm.

Most of them by now held something that resembled a weapon, whether it was a hammer, a security baton, or a handgun. Three N99 service pistols were found, one of them was offered to him with priority going to current and former servicemen. With it, he had a pack of thirty 10 mm rounds. Most impressive though, was the strange weapon the doctor held against his shoulder, the stock resting in the crook of his left arm.

All the while, Remington kept his right hand clear. If that wasn't enough, his strut was vaguely reminiscient of a veteran serviceman, which was fitting for someone who might have taken a comission for a medical officer after getting his degree.

When the doctor was done, he stepped up to the control panel, and made a short, nervous speech about preparing for the future.

Though he tried, he couldn't focus. All he could think of now was Jenny and Shaun… that and the gun he was packing.

Finally when it was over, the speaker produced a cable from his pip-boy and plugged it into the control panel beside him. With the press of a button, the massive door rotor mount rolled forward and began moving the massive lead and steal door.

From the edge of the line up, they filed down the bridge in a strangely orderly fashion. When it was his turn to climb down the steps of the other side, he was greeted by the elevator that had brought him down. As he took his place on the massive cog shaped lift, James Tyrell Rodgers took a last look past the open vault door keeping his eyes on it left his view.

Only then did he put on his protective goggles, and face the unknown.

 **Authors Note: changed title From "No Place for Justice," to "Where have all the Yankees gone?" There's an awful lot riding on a title in my book, and I wanted something that had felt like it had deeper meaning and less like a draw from the generic title hat. Also changed James's last name from Tyrell to Rodgers (There's going to be many Blade Runner references in this story and this one was particularly strong.) Some other minor changes were made to make the story feel more consistent.**


	2. Act I: The trail

On the way up, James' thoughts had vaguely drifted to wondering what the outside of the vault would look like. Nothing could prepare him for the shock of it all.

His gaze crossed over a land of unchecked overgrowth and rusted equipment from his vantage point until his eyes fell to what had once been Sanctuary Hills, his home.

For some time, all he could do was stare. In the neighborhood below the hill, the houses were in a state of disrepair - obvious even from where he stood. Though most houses survived and were still standing, they were little more than hallowed out shells.

James turned from the cliff and stole glances from his neighbors, who were every bit as speechless as he was. Around the lift, he could see the ruins of the Vault-Tec compound.

Elsa Kovacs was the first to make a move, throwing her arms around her mom. Without any hesitation, her father joined the embrace. In the face of devastation, they still had each other after all.

That was the moment when it really hit him. When it properly daunted on him. James caught himself staring at the scene, then suddenly he couldn't take it anymore and stepped off the elevator. It was almost like he had lost the ability to breathe for a moment when his boots touched the soil. His life gone, his was son missing, and his wife was dead.

James ambled across the desolate, rubbish strewn property towards the path that led down to Sanctuary. His gait was labored, and he stumbled every now and then. For some reason, the energy he felt trying to get out of the vault had suddenly disappeared.

The sheer shock of seeing what this place had devolved into sure didn't help.

As he passed by the gate, James came across the dusty skeletons of other former neighbors that didn't make it and the National Guardsmen identified by their tattered fatigues. Most of them looked to have mercifully died when the blast reached their position, though some, judging from the poses of their remains, were not as lucky.

Down the path, he looked around for signs of recent activity; footprints on the dusty trail, movement through the overgrowth which threatened to hide the path from both was a futile exercise, and he found nothing to suggest that man or even animal were here recently.

He came to the footbridge that marked the outer edge of the neighborhood. Where he remembered the bridge being made of stout maple, it now creaked under his weight.

Beneath it though, the water flowed just as it always had. He stopped and found himself looking down for no other reason than to notice the almost normal sight of the water flowing into the Concord.

Up the hill he reached Sanctuary Hills proper, with the others following from a distance. The path from the vault ended where Liberty Street merged with Monument.

Vault-Tec had planned the neighborhood, so that the path to the vault would originate in the heart of Sanctuary for the sake of participants like himself who had been pre-approved for housing.

The community itself was built along Liberty and Monument streets with a Cul-de-Sac on each. On the northern end, the modular futurist houses gave way to a handful of farmsteads further up Monument.

On the Southern edge, Sanctuary Park and its functional community center, stood across from the Visitors Center for Minuteman Park on Liberty.

Now though, it was surreal, seeing the decrepit houses lining the streets and wrecked cars dotting the disused road. He did however, find the lack of any small litter and general debris rather surprising.

If the ground above Vault 111 was any indication, bits of rubble should have been everywhere, and yet, the streets were eerily pristine save for the hulks of rusty cars parked along the curb.

"As I live and breathe..."

James Rodgers stopped in his tracks. He hurriedly swung around, turning to the source of the familiar voice. It was none other than his Mr. Handy who had been busy trimming a neighbor's hedge.

"Codsworth?"

"It's... It's REALLY you!"

"Codsworth, If, you're still around..." James stated the obvious in the most dumfounded manner possible, searching for words.

"Well of course I'm still around," the robot interrupted him without realizing it. "Surely, you don't think a little radiation would deter the pride of General Atomics International?

He recalled that General Atomics shielded all their creations as a general practice. Though his body had obvious signs of wear, his functions seemed higher than he remembered. That was when he thought to ask.

"How long was I in that vault?"

Codsworth perked up. "Well, according the old chronometer, it looks like you're... erm, two hundred and ten years late for dinner. Yes, two hundred and ten years, heh heh! I should whip you up a veritable feast to compensate, Mr. Tyrell! You must be just famished!"

"Two hundred and ten years... Bullshit!" He stammered in disbelief.

"You do recall that ' _bullshit_ ' is not the nature of my programming."

James did, though Codsworth had become snarkier than he remembered. He wondered if that was part of the sentience algorithms that some AI's were known to develop. If two hundred years had truly passed by without maintenance, then it would explain much. "Thanks for reminding me," James conceded wearily.

"You sir seem a little worse for wear," Codsworth observed as the neighbors reached the street, and began to diffuse towards thier homes. "Best not let the missus see you in that state. "Shall I ring the misuses?"

"She's... in a better place." He looked around at the devastation as he spoke. "Strangers broke into the Vault and just... murdered her. They've taken Shaun away somewhere. I've... I haven't seen him since." It took everything he had in him to keep his voice from cracking.

"Sir, these things you're saying, I think you're suffering from hunger induced paranoia. Shall I whip up a snack?"

James was taken aback. It would also seem that the Mr Handy had gone insane at some point. "Codsworth...are you okay? You seem...nuts."

The robot hovered in place and kept silent for a moment before he spoke. "Oh, sir, it's been just horrible." Codsworth sounded as if he were on the verge of breakdown. "Two hundred of them with no one to talk to... no one to serve!" The hood over Codsworth's eye lens narrowed in slightly. "I spent the first ten years doing futile housework to occupy myself, trying to get the nuclear fallout out of the woodwork, thinking that you would all return from the Vault any moment now, but a quick look at the geiger counter dashed my hopes like nothing else! Why, after all the bombs dropped and everything happened, I thought for certain that you and your family were... dead!"

"Focus Codsworth." His voice nearly broke as he barked out the words. "We need to find Shaun. Did you see a group of suspicious men stumble around town on the way to the Vault recently?"

"I'm afraid I know nothing of the sort, sir," Codsworth said in his polite British butler personality module that he found endearing for some reason. "No one's been around here lately, though I should say that our first step should be the neighborhood itself. Should I accompany you as we search for Shaun around, or at least evidence to his whereabouts?"

Before James could answer, he heard a scream from a neighbor. He saw Mrs Whitfield whack something he couldn't see from where he stood.

"Let's do it." He solemnly nodded.

The next ten minutes where a blur as they inspected the neighborhood, incinerating oversized insects in every other shell of a home that made up the suburban part of Sanctuary.

"Nothing here... again." Codsworth was morose in his tone. "Sir, I don't think we could find anything we could use to better locate Master Shaun anywhere in Sanctuary! His kidnappers, dastardly villains they were, had been quite the professionals indeed."

"I guess we'll just have to head into town for more information." James sighed, dreading to imagine how a nice town like Concord looked now. "Come on, buddy. Let's head over to Concord."

"Sir...? Are you sure?" Codsworth's eye fixtures whirred off to the side. "Concord isn't as friendly as the town we used to visit back in the day. The people who have taken residence there beat me with sticks and some even shot at me a few times before I floated off back to Sanctuary." The robot paused. "And there's the issue of my rather doubtful usefulness to you in combat. I'm afraid I'm just a lowly Mister Handy, sir... you'd certainly get more mileage out of a Mister Gutsy over poor domestic me," he glumly added.

His eyes drifted to the house across the street, and saw Baker looting the vacant structure. "You know what? I need some time to myself, some time to prepare then I'll go. Why don't you look after the house?"

"I shall prepare the home for young Shaun as best I can," replied Codsworth in his usual chipper voice.

James entered the house, and couldn't help but wince upon passing the front door. Appliances had gone to rust, wooden furniture was badly weathered. Despite this, he saw plenty of signs that Codsworth's cleaning subroutines had been running regularly. The floors themselves were well sanitized among other things.

After staring for a moment at the surreal horror of his living room, he made his way to the utility room. Within, he uncovered the door to the crawl space.

The crawl space had three major partitions. In the centre was the shared space where he and Jenny stocked up on survival gear. Here, they had managed to cram enough MRE's to feed a family of three for at least four months and that included purpose made baby food. Everything else was camping gear, which fit the theme nicely.

To the left, was Jenny's private storage. To the right was his. Here they kept their secrets from one another, in unspoken agreement.

He entered his section of crawlspace. _His section,_ James frowned. The word just didn't have the same meaning anymore. The whole house was his, the crawlspace was his, even his wife's secret space where she used to and still probably held some things he'd rather not know about, even after he'd gotten her to go clean.

Near his side of the room, a small amount of clear space amid the tightly packed supplies that functioned as his private office. James planted his ass in the swivel chair and pressed the power button. Nothing happened.

He should not have been surprised that there was no power in the house thanks to a lack of a working grid. But then again, he wasn't exactly in his right mind at the moment.

Frowning, he put the N99 that he had been holding all this time down on the desk, and fiddled with the pip boy until he found the flashlight setting. Using the light, he moved a few boxes of MREs that had no doubt lost all flavor even in the cooled environment. Behind the stack nearest to the desk was a Universal Electric fusion cell generator.

He plugged it in to the surge protector before snatching a fusion cell from a false bottom in one of his desk drawers. The shoebox sized generator came to life after he popped the battery in and flipped the switch.

This time he hit the terminal's power button and was rewarded with the single beep as the boot process initialized. James logged into his private terminal when he saw the credential prompt. On his screen, he scrolled down the interface, until he found the option for door control which he had marked as "Sesame."

He selected the unlock command, which disengaged the mag locks on the door he had jury rigged, and stepped in. To his surprise, his stockpile of valuables was better preserved than he had anticipated. That included military grade hardware (some of it technically illegal in New England for a private citizen to hold.)

The small room, which was the size of a walk-in closet (though with a lower ceiling) somehow had enough space for a reloading bench, a Gunsafe, a bookcase, and a steamer trunk.

His first move was to unlock the gun safe to his left. Within the safe, was his meager collection of firearms.

Within the safe on the far right, was a Winchester bolt action chambered for .308. To its left, was a 12 gauge hunting shotgun, and finally, a commie bloc assault rifle built for 556, that he'd come into possession of during the evacuation of Pusan. Lastly, there was an N99 10mm, lying on the floor of the safe.

Without hesitation, he grabbed the assault rifle and slung it over his back. If any of the guns could work perfectly after all this time, it would be that one.

Unlike most communist arms used by China and their allies during the war, the weapon was of Soviet manufacture. Russia was reluctant to export arms to anybody too close to China, but North Korea was Comrade Kirov's exception to the rule.

Then again, Kirov like his predecessors probably didn't take that country and their loony leaders seriously.

Nearly five years after the invasion of Alaska, The DPRK teetering on the brink, saw their chance to strike. Within two months, the Korean People's Army was outside Pusan on the verge of swallowing the South Korean Junta whole.

With military resources stretched thin at Alaska, The Philippines, and Indochina, the army's presence in Korea was only at brigade strength with only 4,000 soldiers when they blitzed into Seoul. At Pusan, they faced an army of 60,000 and three times the size of their local allies.

If that wasn't enough, there were plenty of partisans operating in the shadows of the beleaguered city.

Despite this, mercifully few of their number would be left behind, either dead or taken prisoner thanks to heavy reliance on traps, and various automated defences set up by engineers such as himself.

"Seems fitting doesn't it," James muttered to himself, as he turned around to the other side of the room where his reloading bench stood. "Had it about as long as you." At the foot of it was an ammo container which he marked 'Service caliber'. It was the heavy duty 55 grain Full Metal Jacket version, with a handful of tracers thrown in just because.

The gun itself was issued to some North Korean agent tasked with putting out hits on anybody too friendly with Americans. He'd had wounded several civilians under escort and killed one of their translators, before trying to bug out.

James, by sheer luck, was in the assassin's escape route at the time, and punched his ticket then and there. First man to die by his hand, at least directly.

That was also the day he met Jenny. In the aftermath, he'd stabilized her with a stimpak while the actual medics saw to the nastier more urgent casualties.

Jenny Jung as she was known stateside, was incidentally an even higher profile target in that group. She was a liaison of the Robco Pusan Office to the Army. Robco's support for the war effort had earned Koreans affiliated with the corporation a lofty priority on the shit list.

There was also the fact that her main qualification as a rep to the local brass, was her American father who happened to be a bird Colonel. That of course made her "hon hyeol", or "mixed blood" in racist local speak, which meant she would be a sacrifice to the god of third world nationalism with the coming of the reds; one that she nearly became.

Though she was never formally acknowledged by her father, Colonel Maxson was still one to look out for his blood no matter how much he got around. His machinations after all had seen them married within the week.

James detached the magazine from the gun, and proceeded to stuff it with ammo. When he finished, he snatched another .30 round mag wedged into the end of the container.

He moved on, past the bookcase to his chest that was his wardrobe. The chest held various items of clothing and some armor. James dug around until he found a proper utility belt with a holster, and a bandolier for more ammo.

James stopped by the box to fill the bandolier, before leaving his man closet. In the common area of the crawlspace, he grabbed a backpack from the pile of outdoor sporting goods. It took him a few seconds to find what he needed for the trip, which was anybody's guess at this time.

He broke open a case of MREs and took out a single package. From there, he snatched a first aid kit and a utility knife.

On his way out of the crawlspace, he powered down the terminal and generator, while taking the pistol he had been given in the vault. Surprisingly, it was in better condition than the one he'd bought from the local pawnshop.

He walked out of the front door stopping only to retrieve his wallet which he left behind in the haste to reach the vault. In truth, the move was out of instinct rather than conscious thought.

"I'm off now, Codsworth. Look after the Homestead will you." James addressed the Mr. Handy as he walked out the doorway.

"Mr. Tyrell, before you go, I found this holotape. I believe she was going to present it to you as a surprise, but then, well... everything happened."

"Thanks," James mouthed the words somberly, as he took the tape and put it in the drive for his pip-boy.

The walk down Liberty to the southern edge of Sanctuary must have been a sight with him armed to the teeth, because he could feel more than a few eyes on him.

"Where are you headed man?"

James stopped in tracks and with a turn of his head, set his gaze on Frank. He did not consider himself a social person, but Frank was probably the closest thing to a friend he had around here.

Frank Dipietro or "dippy" was a short barrel chested native of Boston from the North End and spoke with a thick Bostonian accent that was typical of the predominately ethnic neigborhoods near the waterfront. He had left the army at the end of his enlistment to join Boston PD as jack of all trades cop.

"To find my son." He looked ahead again and nodded at the taller buildings in the distance. "Might as well see what Concord holds too."

"Reuven told me about your boy. For all the good it does, you have my sympathy."

"Thanks Frank," replied James.

"Mind if I go with you? To Concord, I mean."

"I won't object. Hear there's violent people in that town now."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"My Handy."

Frank grunted. "Wonder why."

James merely shrugged and kept walking while Frank followed with his service pistol sheathed into a makeshift holster. Once they reached the Visitors Center, he took the path across the park to the Old North Bridge.

Minuteman National Historical Park, in his opinion, was easily the most interesting thing about Concord. The land he now walked was the place many considered ground zero of the American Revolution. It was on the North Bridge, where the first shots of the war had been fired.

They crossed the bridge, and James couldn't help but wonder how the Minutemen of old would think of if they could see the nation they helped conceive.

Would they be proud of the great power they helped inspire? Would they feel anger? What if they only felt sadness?

Though he'd asked himself the question a few times since seeing this place for the first time, the bridge which was a replica, was simply another victim to the state of decay that pervaded the atmosphere. Once again in sore need of a replacement.

They crossed the bridge which had collapsed in multiple sections, carefully weighing each step as though the creaky bridge were a minefield. Once across, they continued east until they reached the Red Rocket Station just outside the park.

There was no sign of life except for a massive German Shepherd eating at something aside one of the station's coolant pumps. The dog's ears seemed to perk up suddenly, and he looked up at them.

The dog trotted over to him curiously, eyes and ears alert. James dropped down to one knee, extending his arm to stroke the dog's head, which pressed against his hand eagerly and wagged his tail. "Hey pal, you got an owner?"

The stray German Shepherd only whimpered. James tried to see if he could find a tag, but this dog wore no collar.

"You know," Frank piped up. "With all that's happened, I think someone could really use a dog. Just saying."

"What are you saying Frank?" James asked the man just a little too bluntly, head turned slightly to talk over his shoulder.

"Dogs are man's best friend. We all need friends, especially when our lives goes tits up."

"Therapy dogs, huh?" grunted James without emotion.

"My daughter died in January, while I was on tour. If not for my Bernese, I probably would have committed suicide last spring."

"Damn, that's horrible." James was beginning to understand where the man was coming from. "How… did she die?" he uttered, still facing the Shepherd, unsure whether he was crossing a line.

"Her mother got high on Psycho with some rat fucking jody one night." Frank's voice betrayed no small amount of anger. "She went to the penitentiary, he went to the stockade making gravel at Fort Leavenworth or wherever they send violent offenders these days."

Something in Frank's voice made James shiver. He'd heard plenty of whispers about experiments of questionable legality being performed on convicted servicemen. No doubt they had at least a grain of truth about them.

He also thought of Jenny. Though her painkillers addiction made him mad as hell at times, that was nothing to psycho. "How did you deal with it?"

Frank set his fists on his hips and gazed out to the side. "I was in Anchorage, part of the mop up at the time. Wasn't until a few weeks later our unit rotated back to Fort Irwin. It didn't really sink in until I came home and nobody was left. All I had was the family dog."

"We were still busy," he continued. "When they didn't have us training visitors in power armor survival tactics, we were getting called up to contain riots all over the Southwest Commonwealth. Still, I ended up getting shitfaced every chance I could find until I decided that just wasn't fucking enough."

"There a moral in that story for me?" James asked. He had an ugly feeling this would hit close to home pretty soon.

"There sure as hell is," Frank remarked. "Within a couple weeks, I was staring down the barrel of my pistol almost bent on ending it there and then. The only thing that stopped me was the look my dog gave me. _Why would you do such a thing?_ She seemed to be saying. I looked her in the eyes for a while, and suddenly I just couldn't do it."

James continued petting the dog, who was now brushed up against the legs of his vault suit. When Frank finished speaking, he found himself staring down into those brown eyes. Eyes that almost made him forget the nightmare he was living in.

"Need a family, boy?"

The German Shepherd licked his hand.

"Come, we've got a trail to find."

* * *

 **Author's note: So a few things to address...**

 **Apologies if the chapter felt a little clunky, but the infodump was inevitable for what is essentially a character overview phase one.**

 **I should probably reiterate, that this story is not all "sunshine and bottlecaps," to quote Deacon. Sure there will be plenty of light moments, but this story will be pretty dark at other times. Also, some rather uncomfortable subjects will be touched upon. I want this story to showcase a multitude of grey moral elements as the devs intended (less of this dualistic Fallout 3 morality.)**

 **After spending a fair amount of time on Google Earth, I came to the decision that certain parts of the map would make more sense with some reimagining on my part. After doing some research on Minuteman National Historical Park, I just couldn't see Sanctuary in the same light especially considering the role it will play in the story. Aside from the Concord region which was seriously condensed in the name of fitting in the worldspace without looking seriously awkward on the map (this will probably include a depiction of Hanscom AFB among other things) I'm going to try and avoid too much in the way of creative liberties for the more scaled parts of the map.**

 **That being said, if you are from anywhere depicted in the Fallout 4 worldspace, or have spent a good deal of time in said area, I would absolutely love your input.**

 **Special thanks to all my reviewers as well my consultants Alexiej, and Mandalore the Freedom. Even bigger thanks goes out to Pro Assassin for being my beta.**


	3. Call of Freedom

**Frank**

* * *

"What kind of animal do you suppose did this?"

Before them, was a dead cow unlike any he had seen before. Its mottled burgundy carcass was parked at the edge of Monument and Bedford, the three-way intersection that heralded the edge of town.

"I don't know," answered James with a shrug. "I'm more curious about the animal in front of you. First it's giant insects, now it's two-headed cows."

Frank hummed in thought. "Can't say that I've ever seen one of those before," he admitted as he leaned in to get a closer look at the creature's shattered bones. "If what we've seen so far is any indication, I'm of half a mind to say it was some big-ass wild pig."

"Why's that?" James asked curiously.

"Just a guess, but I got a feeling that whatever killed it though didn't go too far. For one, the body is still warm."

"How warm?" James asked.

"Probably a couple hours."

"As fascinating as the dead cow is," James planted his fists to his hips as he gaped around at their surroundings, "how about we go before the corpse attracts something I'd rather not know about?"

Frank's instincts were telling him to stay, study and learn more about their environment, but James was a man on a mission; his son had been stolen for no apparent reason and James was going to get him back. Frank liked to think he would have the same obstinate dedication were his little girl still alive.

If James Rodgers, the aloof ninety-day-wonder-child he was, would run balls deep into what was practically uncharted territory for them to find the trail of his son's kidnappers - then damn it, So would he.

They entered Concord speechless. Broken asphalt, litter and leaf piles were strewn along the road.

The buildings themselves seemed to have fared much better. Four in five buildings from where he marched seemed to have retained some semblance of structural integrity. Between them, overgrowth had reclaimed many of the open spaces.

To his right, was the North Bridge Inn. Though its brick construction held firm, other elements such as the fire escape staircase did not. Instead it rested on a roof of an adjacent bus stop broken and toppled.

Around it, many of the less stable houses and shops were boarded up as if they had been marked as age old hazards that looked to be untouched for years.

Following the road further into Concord, they stopped where the road flowed into Monument Square.

To a complete stranger, the rundown square looked a centerpiece for a typical American small town. As a native of Massachusetts though, Frank could damn well remember the long list of things that drew in the tourists to this small city.

Around the proud obelisk were reminders of American history. Ideas born here, that called this town their cradle.

There was the House of Ralph Waldo Emerson, America's first and greatest hippie. Beyond the square was The First Parish where he and his nutjob friends went to church.

Wright's Tavern, a monument to Minuteman times when government affairs were best settled in bars, was settled on the edge of the square by Main Street, opposite of the Concord Town House.

He couldn't place it, but something about the sight of it all made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

James, for his part, looked around briefly then pressed on in the direction of Main Street. As soon as he went three steps, a loud succession of gunshots shattered the eerie tranquillity of the place. In reply, they could hear the dull boom of a laser blast ripping through the air in response to the chatter of another gun's bursts.

"It's coming from Main Street I think," declared James. He pulled back the bolt on his rifle, and took off towards the sound like a fly to a corpse with the dog on his heels. Frank followed James cursing himself for not having more than a 10mm pistol. They passed the old tavern and Fallon's before they could see the scene.

Sure enough, somebody was holed up in the museum.

 _Idiot,_ thought Frank. Despite a good field of fire, the building was too big for one man to defend.

Frank counted five figures on the street near the museum entrance. He didn't know who they were, but he had a feeling they weren't law enforcement.

"Give me your hat Musket Boy!" A loud and hoarse voice shouted.

James looked to him, and they made their decision.

"Behind you boss," yelled another of the figures who turned around with his weapon aimed in their direction.

Frank dived for cover behind a Chryslus flatbed parked on the curb. Once in position, he took aim at the nearest one and squeezed the trigger. The shot went low and took the target in the ass, and nearly knocked him over. The target next to him, went limp with the report of a three round burst from the commie rifle.

He lowered his pistol and climbed into the truck bed, where he lined up his next shot.

They had been taken by surprise and were looking for cover when he saved one of them the trouble, with two bullets to the torso. Another burst from James had winged a thug in the arm.

Just then, a black man in a long flowing duster emerged from hiding, and levelled his rifle. A bright red beam nailed one of the targets who didn't even have time to scream as the heat seared through his heart, lungs and ribcage.

What remained of the force scattered from the kill zone, or tried to anyway. He managed to put a round in one of the two who still had the strength to move. The other, who looked like he could have been no older than fifteen, could barely crawl away.

"Cover me!" James shouted as he moved in with his rifle and the scene.

The man in the longcoat emerged from his cover and sent the wounded fighter to hell with a well-placed shot to the head.

"Hey you!" The man on the balcony called out. "I've got a group of settlers inside! There's raiders inside that are almost through the door up here! Help us! Please!"

 _The fuck are raiders supposed to be?_ Frank asked himself.

James opened the door a crack and motioned for Frank to approach. He jumped off the truck and closed the distance as quick as he could manage. "Check it out Frank," James pointed to what Frank had to admit was a pretty interesting do-it-yourself project.

He holstered his pistol and picked up the jury rigged laser carbine. The weapon didn't appear to be semi-automatic as most energy weapons were, and he wasn't certain he should trust his life to what looked like some redneck engineered Gauss Rifle if it was intended for fitting in tight spaces. Even the PLA had better knockoffs than this.

Still, something told him it was a preferable alternative to everything else, and for the Micro Fusion cells he scrounged would give him at least thirty charges. Frank loaded the rifle, and turned the crank. He was instantly rewarded with a red glow in the chamber. _Man, that was neat._

A burst of automatic fire in a weaker caliber could be heard behind the door, and James signalled his intention to breach the door. Two seconds later he did just that.

Frank quickly took point, and stepped through the doorway. He checked his surroundings, noting the full extent of the damage to the museum. Much of the upper floors had collapsed under the weight of long decayed timber. Above the devastation, the morning sun shined down on through glass ceiling panes now smashed into shards that no doubt littered the floors below. Instinct kicked in, and they both took cover behind pillars in the lobby.

Somewhere up there was a shooter hiding behind cover. Alert eyes scanned every inch in front of them, like a hawk, but he couldn't spot the person from his vantage point.

He saw the armed figure in question when the shooter suddenly emerged from his hiding place and tried to exchange fire with someone while completely unaware of the newcomers.

Frank calmly lined up his shot before loosing the charge in the direction of the 'raider' before they even saw him. The raider's flesh took on a bright orange glow as he teetered and fell from the third floor. His burning corpse landed with a thud.

 _"Have at thee!"_ Some cartoonishly British voice boomed in another room towards his right, like something out of a sketch comedy.

He turned the crank on his new weapon, and gestured for James to take point. His rifle would be better suited for close quarters.

He cautiously walked through the doorway behind James, which went off to the right and down a short corridor. There was another door to the left leading into a poorly lit room.

"No more British occupation!" a voice yelled as the lights in the room came on in a flash. There was a figure right to Franks' left that had an arm raised, which instantly received a burst to the chest.

A moment later, they recovered from the jump scare probably caused by an IR trigger, he realized the James had shot a mannequin. One of many in the room.

"God damned mannequins!" he cursed under his breath.

They navigated the near maze of mannequins in the room as their recorded lines continued to be played through the speakers.

When they entered the next room, a new set lines and sound effects were heard, making it difficult to find enemies in hiding. Here, the lights were already on.

As if to answer his thoughts, a raider sprang out of their position, firing off a pistol at James. The raider managed to squeeze off two rounds, both of which went wild, before a single round from the ssault rifle slammed though the enemy skull.

They made their way to the second floor watching the other's back. James halted at the first doorway and made a few hand motions to indicate the presence of at least two enemies ahead.

Frank slung the laser carbine across his back, and went in drawing his pistol.

He could hear "Battle Hymn of the Republic," quietly play from the ceiling speakers. It did little to drown out the panicked conversation beyond his field of vision.

A desperate voice cut through, giving away their element of surprise. "C'mon man, let's just make a break for the door, no point in waiting around for whoever's out there to come and try an' kill us." The voice sounded like it belonged to someone older compared the others encountered so far.

"Quit bein' such a fuckin' pussy old man." A younger, more impetuous voice challenged him.

"What the fuck, are you deaf?" The older raider roared in reply. "Those punks downstairs are cutting through our people worse than Gunners! Besides why are we even here? So Jared can have a chat with a junkie old enough to be his grandma?"

The younger raider had no chance to give an answer. Frank put three rounds in his torso, then opened up on the older one before he could bring his sawed off shotgun to bear. Over his head came the loud staccado crack of a 556 burst finishing the job. The older raider collapsed onto the rickety timber floor.

They stepped out into the open, and regarded the scene before them. That was when he noticed the mural in the room. A depiction of how far their country had come. He couldn't help but read the plaque that stood in front the concave wall.

 _"This mural commemorates the many sacrifices of the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces. From Lexington and Concord to the shores of Iwo Jima, from the Sea of Tranquillity to the Anchorage Front Line, Americans have fought and died through the ages to secure our nation's freedom. May their sacrifices remind us all that freedom is a privilege afforded to the many, yet hard won by a noble few."_

For some reason, the mural made him feel bitter. _What was he really doing here?_ Frank asked himself. _Why was he fighting his fellow Americans? How did it come to this?_ He didn't have any orders to speak of to kill anybody. Rodgers may have been a captain, but Frank had been discharged not two months before it all happened.

Besides, they had been on ice for at least a few decades. Nobody was around to give Rodgers orders.

 _No_ , he decided pushing the angry thoughts away. Frank had volunteered to help as a friend, as a brother in arms.

All the while, James removed the clip on his gun, and shoved in a few rounds from the ammo belt draped across his chest. When he was done, he pointed at a hole in the wall with his gun.

From the hole, it was a surprisingly quick journey to the next staircase. As they climbed the stairs, they could hear the dull boom of a shotgun nearby. Laser fire answered, followed by an uncontrollable scream that came with the concentrated laser burns.

He freed his left hand, and pulled the door open. It swung inwards, and James fired his weapon through the doorway, full auto into the thugs.

When it was over, Rodgers took off and made for the door at the end of the hall. Frank stayed in the doorway, scanning the other half of the museum for hostiles. It was clear.

The man in the long coat he saw on the balcony stepped through the ruins of the splintered door. The most notable thing about him, was his outfit. He wore a dirty, beige long coat over a waist coat colored a fancy blue with an embroidered yellow design. Around his neck was a tattered turquoise scarf.

Two things though really stood out to Frank. One was the slouch hat, one side of the brim pinned up. The other, was a radio attached to a belt slung around his chest and positioned just under his shoulder.

"Hey, in here," spoke the man. He motioned for the duo to enter the room. As they stepped inside, the dog ran ahead past James and up to the man, who look surprised and then smiled with relief. Kneeling down to pet him, the man said, "Hey Dogmeat, good to see you again boy, you brought us some friends, eh?"

 _Dogmeat? Holy ballsacks, was that the dog's actual name?_ Frank wondered.

'Dogmeat' walked away and sat himself down next to an old lady sitting on a couch nearby.

The man took another step towards them. "Man, I don't know who you guys are, but your timing's impeccable! Name's Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen," he said with a relieved smile, extending his arm to offer James a handshake.

"Captain James Rodgers, US Army" said James as he shook Preston's hand. "And this here's Frank Dipietro, Boston PD."

"United States Army, Boston PD?" Preston seemed confused. "As in pre-war army?"

It was now Frank's turn to be confused. "What do you mean 'Pre-war' army?"

"You know," Preston tilted his head to address him. "Before the great war, when the bombs dropped."

Something about the way Preston said it unnerved him. He made it sound as if it were many lifetimes ago when the Chinks dropped their missiles on America. "Then yes," answered Frank. "We were there when it happened."

Mr. Garvey stared at him stupidly, then at James.

"I'm not sure I can believe that, but I'm grateful to have you two on our side."

"Who are these people?" James pointed in the direction of the settlers Preston referred to earlier.

"They're just folks looking for a less dangerous place to call home. Been leading them since Quincy. A month ago, there were twenty of us, but now we're down to five." Preston was staring in his direction, but not actually looking at him. They had gone through hell, whoever they were.

"My condolences for what it's worth." James spoke in that deadpan voice of his that most who didn't know him considered empathy starved.

"No time to mourn I'm afraid, they have others on the way."

"More?" asked Frank. "Where the hell are they coming from?"

"They're coming from Lexington," answered Garvey. I suggest we make preparations before they get here."

"Alright Garvey," James responded. "What's your plan?"

A visible wave of relief washed over Preston's face and turned to a man in handyman's clothing with a flowing slick back that made him look like a stereotypical "greastie," something many in the North End called him before his army days.

He was going over something on a computer terminal. "Sturges. Give our new friend the run down. I'm gonna keep an eye on the streets to see when Gristle decides to poke his ugly head out."

"Can do boss," the greaser said. Sturges turned around to face them. "Well now friends, It turns out were sitting on one hell of a pre-war armory."

"Here?" James asked.

"Yep, went through the curator's terminal here just to make sure. It seems that every branch of the military donated surplus hardware to the Museum. I suppose its fitting considering the building's history."

"I'm assuming none of these donations were decommissioned," Frank asked curiously.

"You'd be right, It seems that most of the stuff was waiting on the basement level behind locked doors to become exhibits. This key card should be all you need to get in."

Sturges waved around what had to be an employee ID and handed it to Frank who now happened to be closer. "The door should be easy enough to find."

He exchanged a look with James, and rushed down to the basement floor as quick as they safely could.

The first thing they saw, going down the slanted floor, was a generator room.

Next, they came by an enclosed chamber secured by high grade mag locks. Frank inserted the card into the terminal reader. The credentials were acknowledged, and with a couple of clicks the locks disengaged.

Frank grinned despite himself. He suddenly felt like a kid in a candy shop.

Against the walls and lining the shelves of the narrow chamber were more than a few high end arms. Though they had clearly seen better days, they looked more than serviceable.

The first piece to catch his eye, was a scoped M74 Gauss rifle. A note in front of it specified that it had seen action in the Alaska Front from Seventy-Five until the end of China's occupation of Anchorage.

A quick inspection of the gun revealed that the only thing keeping it from working, were a few deliberately loosened pins. Pushing them back in was child's play.

Satisfied, he put down the discount Gauss carbine, and replaced it with the heavier weapon.

There were other items, but none as appealing to him save for a clearly well used carbon steel survival knife like those carried by Air Force Pilots which he pocketed.

"Fuck yes!" James suddenly shouted with excitement. Frank looked over his shoulder to see what the big deal was.

He had been hunched over a terminal which was connected to an automated defense turret. It wasn't just any turret though. It was a portable turret specially designed for airdrops. They were easy to carry, and could be up in as little as a minute from landing.

Now if only they find a good vantage point to put it. Then he noticed the powered down Mr. Gutsy.

"Good Morning Maggot!" Frank flinched when he heard the sound of a Mister Gutsy powering on.

He could see James pulling out his military ID, and holding it out for the robot to identify.

"Identity confirmed sir," came its reply.

"Good, pick up the turret and follow me." The turret was light enough that the robot could carry it. James meanwhile picked up the terminal and the wiring. "Let's see if our friend knows a good spot for this."

They left the room and climbed to the third floor with their finds.

Preston let out a low whistle when he saw the hardware. "Damn, that's some pretty serious stuff there."

"Know a good place to put it?" James asked the man.

"That depends, can it power itself?" asked Sturges.

"It runs with a fission battery, I just need a good place to set it up."

"The roof should work just fine, just pass through that door and go to your left."

They found the entrance to the roof easily enough. From there, Frank eyed their surroundings. "What direction do you suppose they'll come from?"

James shrugged as he set the terminal on a rusted AC fixture. "I don't know any more than you do, hell I take that back. You spent a lot more time than I did fighting insurgents. You were also with OPFOR when you were stateside. You should be lecturing me about their playbook. I'll probably regret asking this, but what did those fighters remind you of?"

Frank didn't hesitate with his answer. "They remind me of those Mujaheddin, or 'Holy Warriors' as they called themselves in the Stans. Part criminal, part fighter, completely nuts and stoned halfway to paradise."

"Not to be confused with the People's Front or anyone else?" James grunted.

Frank nodded. "The Commies managed to do without chems for the most part. They were proper fanatics who could charge the Gates of Hell with a water pistol. You could look the dying in their slanted eyes knowing they'd go sober as a priest. Those two bit Mountain Goat fuckers from Pashtostan or whatever they call that movement north of the Kyber, on the other hand couldn't even engage an American without shooting up some liquid courage. It made them unpredictable as fuck."

"Well," James replied. "If we can set it to watch the south and western approaches, they won't be able to pin us down. I'll find the targets before they find us."

"Probably the best option," Frank agreed. He helped James unpack the turret and connect it to the terminal. From there, it was only a manner of powering up the terminal and mounting the radar and IFF systems.

James removed the Military ID from his pack and handed it to him. "Take the Gutsy, and make sure they can't approach from elsewhere. I'm setting up a Comm link with the Gutsy who should help you with spotting. Kill anything that hasn't already been identified as friendly."

He took the Gutsy with him, and went inside. No sooner had he come in view of the lobby, the Gutsy piped up. "Unidentified targets inbound for Main Entrance!" It finished the sentence soon enough for the heavy laser turret to come to life with an ear-splitting buzz.

A few fighters made it across the street, and poured in through the front door.

Frank readied his rifle, and primed it for a single stroke firing. He found his first target, and squeezed the trigger. The weapon shuddered in his arms as if it puffed up for a second, and hit a raider square in the chest. His body exploded in every possible direction making for a gruesome spectacle to the rest.

The others took cover wisely, but by then he was on the way down. Frank passed through the office where Preston holed up, and made his way to the second floor.

"Where are they?" Frank yelled at the combat bot.

"Two commie bastards on the first floor!"

Sure enough, two enemies emerged from a doorway and into the hall. He waited for them to approach the foot of the staircase before hitting them.

The first one was hit by a beam from the Gauss rifle. The second burned to death under a burst of bright red laser fire from the robot's energy piece.

"Building clear of hostiles sir!"

"Good," Frank replied. "Where are they now?"

"They're in the street, and they're pulling back."

 _Why were they suddenly doing that?_ he wondered. Frank ran for the entryway, and suddenly understood why.

In the middle of the street, was a massive two legged beast that vaguely took on a resemblance to a crocodile. One quick look at its arms and legs was all it took to know that this was the predator he had been trying to learn about earlier. Three toes made its feet, and big stubby claws formed its hands. A massive tail and an elongated snout suggested that it was a reptile that spent most of its time in a grimy sewer where it must have come from.

 _'If I see another stupid teenager flush a baby gator down the toilet, I'm putting them in the fuking ER'_ he decided. _if they still have those._

The thing looked like something that belonged in a comic book rather than the real world.

A nearby raider fired on the monster, the bullets did next to nothing against its hide. The raider kept shooting until the clumsy animal lumbered towards him and snapped his jaws around the bandit.

It raised its jaws and lifted the paralyzed raider from the ground. With a vicious shake of its head, the lower half of the man tore away and fell to the street in gruesome chunks.

Another raider, who had to be on psycho or some other amphetamine, came in close with a sawed off shotgun and a machete. He gave it both barrels which seemed to have been enough to wound it. The raider then tried to strike at the wound with his machete only to be swatted away like an insect with the monster's giant claws. The raider hit the wall with a force that must have severed his spine.

"Typical Chinese communist, you look like a lizard!" Roared the Mister Gutsy who charged headlong towards the monster and opened up with his laser.

The shots though well placed, did little to slow the killer crocodile who turned his attention to the duo. It charged in their direction, its gait wide and clumsy.

The turret system overhead laid down suppressing laser fire on the other remaining hostiles.

Frank knew that the system had about as much chance as the Gutsy in putting down the creature, as it closed the distance. He cranked the Gauss Rifle to its maximum charge.

The gator, when it was close enough, smacked the combat robot hard enough to ground it. Gutsy went down with a thud. Powerful jaws wrapped themselves around the robot's central housing and crushed it.

This gave Frank the time he needed to aim his rifle between the eyes and loose a five charge round on its long scaly face. The rifle spoke with a roar and the monster's head disintegrated on impact.

He looked around main street with the creature dead in the middle. It was over as quick as it had began. In the ruins before them, no living being remained on the field. Except for the crows who began to fly over the ruins.

Scavengers, the truest winners of every battle, would have their rewards.

 **Note: I wrestled quite a bit with this chapter. I wanted something that much like my depicted layout of Concord (seriously look up this place on wikipedia and think of all the cool quests and dungeons this place could have had if the town hadn't been as compacted for the sake of fitting to the rest of the map), would break the mold, while not feeling too deviant from the canon that it felt unrecognizible.**

 **I chose to cut out the Vertibird from the chapter because its established in previous games that Vertbirds in operational form are an Enclave development rather than a prewar one, and I'd rather not restle with some of the inconsistencies in Fallout 4 with the rest of the series. More importantly though, a crashed Vertibird should draw scavvers like flies to a corpse, so I chose to offer deliverance in a more subtle form.**

 **M74 is the designation I gave for the scoped gauss rifle featured in Fallout 3/New vegas (one with the crank), hence its use of Micro fusion cells rather than other ammo types.**

 **With the power armor, I decided that it would be better, if a few more chapters pass before we even see a set.**

 **Lastly, I decided to replace the Deathclaw with a Gatorclaw. Not only is this "Nuka World Confirmed," but I feel like an invasive sewer dwelling Gatorclaw which is supposed to be a more reclusive ambush predator is an easier sell than a deathclaw, who generally live in small packs.**


	4. The Homecoming

**Special thanks to Alexeij, Aegon Blacksteel, Desert Dancer, Codus, Last Descendant and Winding Warpath for their feedback, but m** **ost importantly Proassassin for putting up with my bullshit.**

* * *

 **James**

When the birds came, he knew deep down it was over.

James powered down the terminal and packed up the turret. If violent men lurked around every corner, he would put it up in the neighborhood for the time when the rest of the Commonwealth noticed the survivors of Vault 111.

He secured the packed turret over his gear and took the terminal in his arms. It looked like he would be carrying the whole deal to Sanctuary without the help of the Mr. Gutsy.

From what James could see, the robot's central housing didn't appear to be anywhere near functional.

He made his way down to the lobby where he saw Frank resting on a bench, his gun inclined against the wall. The German Shepherd was at his feet basking in the attention he received from a new friend.

Standing around him was Preston Garvey and his ragtag band. "That was some show you put on upstairs, I'm glad you two are on our side."

James shrugged. "I suppose I'm on the side of anyone who doesn't look like they'll shoot at me for a snack cake."

"Low standards, but fair enough," said Preston. "Still, you can never have enough friends. Especially these days." He produced a pair of pouches full of something that clinked. One was tossed to Frank, and the other to James which he caught with his free hand.

"What's this?" James asked Preston as Frank peered inside his bag.

"A token of gratitude. I can't allow men like yourselves to work for free." There was a tired bitterness in his voice that tempered his friendly demeanor.

James wasn't sure what he meant, but it left him with a bad feeling about the rest of the world. "We didn't do it for a payday."

"Sorry," the man in the cocked hat apologized, "I'm used to everyone being in it for the money."

"This is money?" A very confused Frank asked Preston.

James opened his pack and to his surprise, it was full of half rusted bottle caps.

"Have you been living under a rock?" The question came from a sour faced woman who looked to be pushing forty. For someone as aged she was, there was still a harsh beauty in her own way. She didn't give Frank a chance to answer. "What am I saying? I can see vault suits under your clothes. Of course, you two have been under a rock. You've lived without a care in the world and wanted for nothing, while everybody else in the Commonwealth struggles for every meal."

"Your gratitude is noted," James cut her off.

The woman of medium height and jet-black hair turned her scowl on him.

James felt his own mood darken. Not only did she vaguely resemble Jenny, but the lady's demeanor reminded him of her in her more stormy of moods.

"What's your problem? I wasn't talking about you."

"Enough Marcy!" The generally soft-spoken voice of Preston Garvey struck like a whip. "I think we've asked enough questions of our friends for now." He turned his attention to Frank. "Sorry about that, we've been through a lot in the last month."

Frank grunted and nodded his head, as was his way of saying 'apology accepted.'

"Anyway, there's a place called Sanctuary Hills that we're looking to settle."

James choked on his breath, and exchanged a glance with Frank, who looked up from the poorest named German Shepherd he had met, his eyes the size of milk saucers.

"You been there by any chance?"

"We have," was Frank's noncommittal reply.

"It's less than an hour's walk from here," James added.

"Well let's get going, Sanctuary awaits." Preston flashed a smile that almost stretched ear to ear.

The congregation of Minutemen and former vault dwellers all made for the door. Halfway across the room he was intercepted by Sturges, the man who was clearly the brains of the group.

"That's one swell piece of salvage, I'll carry the terminal if you don't mind. I got the feeling that this Sanctuary could always use another turret and control piece."

"Thanks." James handed it over. As the rest filed out of the entryway, he took Preston aside. "I found you people while looking for someone."

"Haven't seen anyone else around but raider's."

James thought about that for a moment. "You might say I'm after a few. They murdered my wife, took my infant son."

"Damn, that's messed up. What did they look like?"

James hesitated when he opened his month, his reply on the tip of his tongue. A few seconds passed before he felt the courage to acknowledge his memory. "I saw one in a containment suit… another in a leather jacket."

Preston Garvey thought it over for a few moments. "Doesn't sound like any raider gang I know about. If I were you, I'd head for Diamond City. There's a detective who specializes in finding people. They say there's nobody like him."

With that, they headed back down the main street as a group.

Except for Frank. He was looking at the body of one of the fallen. If the outfit of a cream formal shirt and cowboy hat was any indication, he was probably one of Preston's. "James, you got a stim in your pack?"

He dropped to one knee, opened his bag. After a few seconds of fishing through it, James found one and handed it to Frank.

"He's lost a lot of blood and he's got a bit of a weight problem with all that lead. Still has a decent pulse all things considered. I think your guy has a chance, sir." He found a vein, and injected the stimpak. The unconscious minuteman's body seemed to shudder at the sensation.

Preston looked about ready to choke up when he knelt down and felt for the man's pulse. "Thank you very much guys, I don't know what to say."

"Then don't say anything. This should do him until we get to Sanctuary. There's a doctor around who might be able to save him."

"Thanks, I guess I'll carry Ned." After a quick inspection of his wounds, Preston stood him up then slung the wounded man over his shoulders in a fireman's carry.

As he walked further up the street, he noticed the monster and the Mr. Gutsy. Upon closer inspection of the robot it soon became clear that it was toast; the central housing was cracked, and the upper level input attachments were broken off. Aside from the thrusters and the arms below the chassis, there was nothing much to save.

Frank noticed the way he looked at the robot. "We should come back here with your Handy?"

"I guess Codsworth could use some of the good stuff," James admitted. The New England Commonwealth had some of the strongest restrictions on second amendment rights anywhere, but now the rule of law was settled by the guns of whatever gang happened to be biggest. That's why he felt no qualms about making off with what was technically Uncle Sam's property.

They lagged behind the rest of the group, who seemed to already know the general direction of Sanctuary. He told Frank about his conversation with Garvey.

"Diamond City?" asked Frank, "where's that supposed to be?"

"Sorry, didn't think to ask." James turned to watch the road ahead. "Too much other shit going through my mind."

"Ain't that the truth," Frank agreed.

"Hey, Preston!" James hollered out to the column ahead. "Which way's Diamond City?"

He halted and swung around. "That way." He bobbed his head in the direction of the way they came.

"It's in the Fens, on the other side of the Charles. Used to be some arena before the war."

"Thanks man."

He exchanged a look with Frank. "So there's a city, inside an arena, in Fenway called Diamond …"

Frank stopped himself mid-sentence, and his face became a mask of confused horror. "That better not be Fenway Park he's talking about," he said, voice a low growl.

James didn't reply.

"My favorite ballpark is probably some big-ass homeless shelter by now, goddammit."

"If people are living there, then it would appear that somebody finally did something useful with that stadium," James deadpanned.

"Fuck you, asshole." He flipped James the bird. "Fuck you and the Mariners. At least the Red Soxs have," he stopped to correct himself, " _had_ a decent stadium that doesn't look like a canopied litter box."

"Baseball wasn't my religion. I couldn't bring myself to give two shits about baseball, Dippy. That was her thing…" the words almost caught in his throat. "Easy way to be a 'real' American and shit like that."

There was a moment of awkward silence before Frank spoke up, "Sorry, I got a little carried away. I guess we New England types take it a little too far."

They walked on in silence down the lonely streets through the rest of the city.

Soon Concord was behind them, were and the Monument Street Red Rocket came into view. Overhead gray clouds moved in, and soon began dripping rain.

As they passed the station, the rain picked up a bit. It was just enough to make a few in the group shiver with the passing of the October breeze.

Up ahead Sturges began to blow on his arms, now and then.

Preston noticed, and assured his friend that they'd get a fire started the second they reached Sanctuary.

"W-Where are we going, Marcy? I don't like us be-being out in the open like this..." The broken man - Marcy's husband - asked, speaking up and falling slightly behind Preston's echelon. His eyes darted around, observing every corner of their environment clearly expecting a trap nearby.

"Just across the bridge up ahead," James answered. They had taken a left from the station putting them closer to the Old North Bridge.

All the while, he inwardly tried to process the sensory overload that kept him on edge.

 _Who were these Minutemen? Why were their attackers so determined to pursue them? What passed for civilization these days?_

Too many questions, with precious few answers.

The procession came to a halt. Preston, who led the column, suddenly stopped in his tracks.

Beside the bridge, the old Minutemen Monument stood proud and unfazed by its surroundings.

"Well, I'll be damned!" Garvey exclaimed. "I heard about this place." His voice which had been mostly grim before, became alive with excitement. "That's the monument to the Original Minutemen! Oh man! I mean, I knew that this was somewhere around here, but actually seeing it in person is something else. That would mean," Preston let his sentence hang for a moment to find his words. "This must be the Old North Bridge where the Revolution began."

"Who cares about what happened here long ago?" Marcy Long spoke up. "This is what Mama Murphy saw when she was stoned out of her gourd?"

"Will you stop?" Sturges drawled.

"You know Marcy," Preston turned to face her, "I'm not much of one to believe in signs from above, but this is the hand of God if I ever saw it," he declared to the group.

"Here we are, ladies and gentlemen," James addressed the column. "Welcome to Sanctuary Hills."

They stood in front of the Old North Bridge and took in the sight of overgrown field before them, and the visitor's center that stood over the edge of the sacred ground.

One by one, they filed across the bridge, unsure of how stable it was. From there it was quick march up the path to the neighborhood, where he and Frank took the lead.

"Hey Kyle, where's the Doc?" James asked the first person he saw.

"Out surveying the gardens your Handy tended, I think." Kyle Russell was a bald man in his thirties with sunken cheekbones and a height of roughly six feet. "What's going on?"

"We got a wounded man with a weight problem," Frank gruffly answered him.

"Should be a few houses down then," James said.

He and Frank split up. It wasn't long before Doctor Remington was found in Mrs. Rosa's backyard Greenhouse.

They put Ned, as the wounded man was called, on the cleanest surface they could find which was a table in her garage draped with ragged sheets.

James ran to his crawlspace storage and returned with a Miss Nanny subroutine program. He commanded Codsworth to shut down, and promptly went to work installing the module in one of the secondary drive bays.

Once Codsworth rebooted, he detailed the Mr. Handy to the surgeon. Remington ran a vocal diagnostic check and thanked James when he confirmed the authenticity of the Nanny programming.

From every corner of Sanctuary neighbors gravitated to the now vacant lot where the surgery was happening. He could see Sturges chatting away with Stuart, whom James assumed had taken a break from looting other homes.

Preston was on the other side of the gathering crowd pacing nervously. He couldn't blame Preston for that. For a man who behaved like a junior officer, it was heartbreaking when your boys looked to you for answers and you had none to give because you weren't God.

 _Damn, is it lonely at the top._ There were days when he missed the blissful ignorance that came with being an enlisted man.

"He any good at removing bullets?" Preston asked him.

James shrugged. "I don't know, but he's probably better I than I would be."

Garvey nodded slightly. "I know I should feel better. It's not every settlement that has somebody who knows how to clean out a wound of any kind…" he paused for a moment, "it's just that I watched most of our number die on the way here from Quincy."

"Quincy?" James raised an eyebrow. "What's it like these days?"

"You haven't heard? It's horrible. Gunners hold the city and they'll milk it dry until spring. Then they'll hit another town once Quincy is starved of resources."

"Sorry," James deadpanned, "I missed a lot in the last two centuries."

The look on the Minuteman's face was priceless. First it was disbelief, but then his eyes darted all around as if his eyesight had just been restored. A few moments later, and Preston focused on him.

"As in… before the war?"

"Which one?" James asked.

"You know, the one where the bombs fell?"

"Oh that one. Yeah, we were there. Vault-Tec froze us that day, we were out of it for two hundred years. Still feels like it all happened this morning."

The Minuteman stared at him as if he'd grown two heads. "I think I read a comic somewhere that went like this."

"Believe me, it's still hard for me to wrap my own head around it all," Nate replied, rubbing the back of his neck.

"James Rodgers in the 23rd century," Preston offered his sobriquet.

He stared at Preston for a moment before it clicked. "I guess I am." He allowed a chuckle. "Sounds like a fucking franchise right there."

"I still can't believe I'm talking to someone from before the Great War though! You know, somebody who isn't a ghoul."

"Haven't heard that term before."

"They're..." Preston drifted off and looked for the words as if it were a sensitive term. "Irradiated people. Most of them are just like us, but they live a long time after the rads burned their skin to a crisp. Sometimes radiation destroys their brain too, and they try to eat anything that moves."

 _When did the world get so fucking insane?_ James could feel his mind screaming.

"So zombies, in other words," James suggested.

Preston winced at the mention of zombies. "Don't say it to their face. They hate that word."

"Let's change the subject then."

Garvey seemed relieved. "What do accommodations look like here?"

"Go ask Stuart." He pointed at the man in question. "I imagine he'd know which lots are available more than I."

"Broad chest and Glasses?"

"That's him," affirmed James.

The Minuteman nodded and went off to talk to Mr. Baker.

James looked back at Codsworth and saw him assisting with the surgery. That was enough for him.

He noticed a few other neighbors outside the ring of bystanders assessing the state of their homes and decided to have a quick look at his own while Codsworth was busy. He decided on the way that he would take Codsworth with him to this Diamond City.

James Rodgers was about to enter his shell of a house through the carport, when he noticed a row of burlap sacks lining the wall. Curious, he looked through each and was not disappointed.

Tomatoes, potatoes, corn, and garlic were in the bags and looked to be freshly picked. James allowed a faint smile to form.

Jenny had once given him a gift in the form of a RobCo Ag Research module that she had stolen on the way out of the Pusan office. At the time, he wasn't sure if it was some kind of apology, or just sticking it to Robco.

Robert House would have sued his pants off, had the evidence of her theft not fallen into North Korean hands, but fuck that asshole. Most of the regional immigration quotas were filled by General Atomics employees and the darlings of the Poseidon elite who practically owned the president. Not Robco though. The cheapskate recalled the handfull of white employees and fired the rest so he wouldn't have to sponsor anyone's green card.

James grimaced. It was in those desperate times she that had strong armed him into marriage.

"Tie the knot," an MP who happened to be one of her half-brothers had told him. "Or we tie the noose."

They all knew the truth though, it was a honeypot sting from the start. The smug snake had gotten his impressionable nineteen year old self drunk before the whole damn affair.

Colonel Maxson had already pulled the appropriate strings with the State Department to for a marriage visa he would learn. The Immigration Act of 2059 made even those tough to get in the Eastern World.

Now he looked down unsure how to feel. Right now, he was already starting to feel the void in his life. Part of him felt that getting Shaun back would fix everything, but James Rodgers knew deep down in his heart that not even that would be enough.

He let his open pack slip from his grasp and collapse on the concrete. When he chanced to look at it, he noticed a holotape poking out of the bag. Something within compelled him to take and play the tape. After a moment of grainy audio, he could make out her voice.

 _No, no, no. Little fingers away. There we go. Just say it. Right there. Right there. Go ahead._

He could hear Shaun giggling in the background.

 _Ha ha! Yay! Hi honey! Listen... I don't think Shaun and I need to tell you how great of a father you've become... but we're going to anyway. You are kind, and loving,_

Shaun giggled again.

 _... and funny! Ha ha. That's right. And patient. More patient than I could be._

 _Look, with Shaun, and us all being at home together... It's been a lot for us. But even so, I know our best days are yet to come. There will be changes, sure. Things we'll need to adjust to. You'll rejoin the civilian workforce once your enlistment is up… and I… I'll shake the dust off my computer science degree._

 _Listen, I know things between us could be better, but everything we do, no matter how hard... we do it for our family, not your's, not my dad's, but for our family._

 _Now say goodbye, Shaun... Bye bye. Say bye bye. Bye honey! We love you!_

If there had been any air in his lungs, the tape had knocked it clean out. He laid there just staring at the cracked ceiling, the tape playing back in his head. Some part of him told him to stay down, to die a death of least resistance. He pushed the thought out of mind. _Not while Shaun is out there._

"You okay man?" He heard the voice of Garvey from the edge of the carport.

"What do you think Garvey? What's a man like me supposed to be?" James clumsily found his footing, and made a grim smile as he took a step forward.

"We've all lost somebody, I'm not asking if it doesn't bother you." Preston looked him in the eye. "I'm asking if you can carry on, and do what you set out to do when you found us."

"I will find him," came his reply. It was more automatic than conscious.

"Good." Preston patted him on the shoulder. "It's sad to see people like yourself lose the drive to live. Just remember that it takes more courage out here to live for something than to die for it."

"Damn that's a gloomy way to put it."

"Such is life out here."

"How's your friend by the way?" James changed the subject.

"The Doctor says he'll pull through. It's just," he sighed, "it'll be a while before he can walk again."

Behind the Minuteman, he could see Wally Kovacs approach.

Looking to be in his mid fifties, with thinning red hair and a lightly wrinkled face, Wallace Kovacs was a man who looked forever sour.

Preston exchanged a look with the man and crossed over the remains of the lawn.

"You're not heading in the direction of Lexington, are you?"

James gave a subtle nod of the head. "As soon as Codsworth is ready, I'm heading back out."

"Mind if I join you there?"

"Your funeral, it's a dangerous place out there."

"Yeah, I heard. I'm taking my shotgun."

"I appreciate the offer of company, but you don't have to do this. You have a family here."

"Don't worry about them, son. My daughter's an adult, and my wife is the most self-sufficient person I know. Honestly, they put me to shame. Besides," he added, "let's just say I have some affairs to set to rest there."

"Well then Mr. Kovacs, I won't tell you no."

"Say, is that food in the bags?" He pointed to the sacs lined against the wall.

"I suppose so, seems like Codsworth has been cultivating a few crops through it all."

"You wouldn't have anything that could be planted today, would you?"

James pondered that for a moment. "I saw a Carrot patch, and I hear carrots grow pretty well about now. Tell you what, come with me to Diamond City and I'll make sure your family has enough for a crop. I'll provision for the trip meals included if you don't mind stale MREs."

Kovacs laughed. "I was in the Marines once, junior. I was chowing on them over the walls of Chapultepec before you were even born."

James returned to his basement to pack for the journey. He stuffed a fistful of MRE's into his bag, and took a bedroll.

By the time he was done, Codsworth was ready. He gave Preston charge of the house while he was gone (It beat the place he got), and handed the Kovacs some carrots to seed.

Dr. Remington thanked him for lending Codsworth and wished him well.

On their way out, Frank joined up for the expedition.

This time, he crossed the river by way of the Monument street bridge, an old stone bridge north of the Old North Bridge, that still held firm even now.

He took point and lead the fire team, three men and a Mr handy.

Behind him, he could hear Frank and Wally conversing. Their voices felt like quiet far off murmurs as they passed the Red Rocket station by. All the while he was stuck in his own thoughts.

 _Too bad that dog belonged to Preston._ When he got Shaun back, he would find a family dog, preferably a German Shepherd like "Dogmeat."

Grateful as he was for the company, he still felt as if he was on his own. Then again, the whole world could follow him down that road and he'd still feel alone.

Suddenly, one question from Wally to Frank broke his concentration. "So somebody came in the vault and popped the fish head?"

James felt himself stop and clench his fist.

"Something wrong, son?" Wally's gravelly voice grated with impatience.

Without really thinking, James spun around and punched the man on the nose.

Wally stumbled back, and cradled his nose with a hand.

James didn't have time to make another move. Frank was on him in an instant and had him down, arms pinned behind his back. In terms of muscle mass, Frank easily had at least forty pounds on him if not more.

"Damn it James, you stupid reckless bastard!" Frank roared. "Calm the fuck down."

"Give me Shaun, and maybe I'll calm the fuck down!"

"Damn it, what was that for," the old marine straightened his nose.

Before James could utter a word, Frank cut him off.

"How about you shut the fuck up Wally! You're a family man for fucks sake, so why don't you show some god damned sympathy for a man who just lost his wife."

It would be a long way to Diamond City.

 **Authors Note: changed title From "No place for justice," to "Where have all the Yankees gone?" There's an awful lot riding on a title in my book, and I wanted something that had felt like it had deeper meaning and less like a draw from the generic title hat. I decided to change James's last name from Tyrell to Rodgers (There's going to be too many Blade Runner references in this story and this one can survive a demotion to middle name. Also, my story) Some other minor changes were made to make the story feel more consistent and there's new addition to the prologue I think many of you will like.**

 **Also, many of my characters will espouse varying forms of bigotry (yes, even heroes too). I make no apology for this, they are human fucking beings in a crapsack yet increasingly relevant world to real life where the "us and them" dichotomies is pretty strong in many places.**


	5. Order Up

**Frank**

"We had a deal, Trudy!" An angry man in a homespun leather jacket yelled in the direction of the old Drumlin Diner. In his hand, he waved an ugly-ass revolver. Beside him was a woman, added muscle most likely.

"I ain't giving you poison-shilling chem pushers anything," The voice of a woman replied from inside, she wasn't even trying to supress the underlying contempt in her tone. "Do you have any idea what that junk does to my boy?"

"He bought them fair and square, Trudy. Not our fault that he's strung out. Don't make me come in and shoot up that little trading post of yours."

They had made it a mile east of Concord where the Cambridge Turnpike met Highway 2, before they found other souls in this forsaken land. The first people they had run into were having an argument about a chem deal.

"Whoa there," the man in the leather jacket turned in their direction and trained his gun on Frank who had taken point since James went ape shit. "This doesn't involve you people."

Frank sighed. In a way, it was all the same. The sleazy little fuck looked like your typical "unlicensed pharmacist," and unapologetic low life. In another time he was an officer of the Boston Police Department looking for opportunities, anything even if it was trumped up jaywalking charge to ensure that these types would be locked away.

"Aw, fuck this. The world can bite my ass."

"Hey, we all got problems. I'm just trying to collect what's owed to me. I don't suppose any of you would like to help. Maybe talk some sense into Trudy here," he suggested, giving his weapon a slight jolt in the diner's direction. "Or if that fails, we could use some extra guns on our side."

"Trudy?" asked Frank.

"Runs the old truck stop an' diner, made it into a small shop."

Before everything had happened, Highway Two was one of the most heavily trafficked roads in and out of Boston seconded only be the Interstates that linked the lower half of New England. It was a fairly rough place by local standards and was known to many as "The Wicked Shipping Club," for its popularity with truckers of that company.

"I sell her chems," the enterprising dealer continued. "She give me caps and other goods. When her son Patrick had his eighteenth birthday, I may have sold him some jet, then more, than a lot more. Now he's in debt."

He could feel his own lips curl in disgust while the pusher made his case, and found himself wondering if anybody would give a shit about his badge or anything it represented. Probably not, after all this time.

"I'm sorry," growled Wally. He sounded a little different, having to mostly breathe through his mouth as his nose recovered. "Are we supposed to feel bad about some poor cheated chem shark?"

"Yeah, yeah, I've heard it before old man. Thing is, he wanted a product and I sold him a product. A product I expect to be paid for. Now, any of you interested in making some quick caps?"

"Look," interjected Frank, "I've had enough killing for one day, how about I try to talk things over with her?"

"I appreciate it," the thug took the bait. "Talk to her and we'll back you up if things go sideways."

He gestured for James and Wally to stay put. He'd managed to keep the two from coming to blows this long. The light sedative compound he had brought with his first aid pack was only short term and had kept James from attacking Wally for less than an hour's time.

Now it was nearly worn off and he seemed capable enough of walking without using Codsworth as a guide.

The only thing that had kept Codsworth from intervention was Frank's badge which all consumer class robots had been programed to recognize.

He felt like a real dick for doing it and dreading having to explain himself to James. That was not to say he regretted it, though.

Wally had uttered "fish head," in earshot of James, unaware that it was his wife who had been murdered. The old jarhead had deserved it, he didn't dispute that. Still, James had become a danger to himself, and all others in the group.

He approached the diner where he could see her outline on the other end of a window side booth. One look at her face was enough to know that the world had not been kind to her.

"I heard you talking to that poison seller. He ain't getting his money, period."

"Ma'am, I'd like to help. What's the problem here?"

"Wolfgang and his deadbeat friends made an addict out of my boy. I don't know what he offered your people, but I'll pay 100 caps to put that scumbag in the ground."

"World could always do with one less scumbag," he admitted.

"Thanks stranger, I'll back you up."

Frank drew his gun and spun around, in one elegant motion. He hit Wolfgang's associate with a shot below the ribs before her own pistol cleared the leather. Hearing the report of a short burst, she staggered backwards, collapsing by the roadside guardrail.

Wolfgang brought up his revolver but was put down by Wally's hunting shotgun before he could even so much as pull back the hammer.

The incident was over nearly as quick as it had begun. Two new corpses were sprawled out by the wayside amongst rotting piles of trash.

James had his assault rifle unslung and at the ready, having missed the affair. His reflexes slow, mental state groggy.

A pang of guilt sunk in. Frank had initiated a gunfight within spitting distance to someone he had sedated without considering that he might get caught in the crossfire. That was a fucking stupid move on his part.

The trader laughed from behind her store and tossed a sack of caps at his feet. "I can't wait to see the crows feed on those scum. Thanks for your help, for you folks my store's always open."

Scooping up the sack, Frank handed it back to her. "This is blood money, I'm not sure I like this."

Trudy's expression twisted, looking at him as if he lost his mind. "But... you earned this."

Frank flicked his gaze from Wally, to James, then Codsworth. "Tell you what, we're heading for Diamond City. We could use some provisions."

"That's more than fair. Oh hell, it's about lunchtime now. How about I fix you guys a proper meal?"

Her face, which had been lined with rage before, was now alight with joy. The sudden shift in emotions after killing someone made Frank feel unnerved. It brought to mind a few of his darker hours in uniform.

"We won't object to the hospitality." His eyes landed on a teenager who seemed to be infected with some kind of fever. "You folks going to be fine?" he asked, concerned.

Trudy sighed. "It's going to take a while to get the junk out of his system, but we'll pull through. We always have."

There was something in that statement that made him stop and take a second look at her. There was a certain amount of courage in that statement, that he could not help but respect.

Soon, the three of them were seated in a booth. He had arranged for James and Wally to sit diagonally from one another so that James would be less tempted to lash out.

For a short while, they waited in silence. While Trudy put together a meal. She'd given them a few options, based on around headcount. In the end, they had opted for Blamco Mac N' Cheese. James offered up Codsworth's assistance, which the woman took.

It wasn't long before they each got a tin of what looked like an attempt at American Chop Suey.

"Thanks for lending the Handy," Trudy nodded at James. "I didn't know they could purify water. You'll have to let me borrow him when you're around."

"You're welcome." James stifled a yawn as the words came out.

Trudy took the open space at the booth. Instead of promptly digging in, she tented her arms and prayed aloud. They followed as she said grace.

"Thank you God, for this meal and for the company. May you watch over them on the road to Diamond City. Amen." The prayer was quick, and informal. When it ended, they tried the dish.

For something that came out of a two-hundred-year old box (he still wanted to call bullshit when Sturges told him), it was surprisingly good. Mixed in with the noodles and the cheese sauce, was a diced vegetable that looked kind of like a tomato. There were also bits of meat in the stew. He decided not to ask what the mysterious ingredients were.

"So what brings you in the direction of Diamond City?" Trudy asked.

"Looking for a man, who can find my son's kidnapper. It's almost like they vanished in thin air."

"That's a tough break," grunted the trader. "Usually, though, raiders around here are pretty straightforward in owning up to that. Hard to get a ransom otherwise."

Frank cleared his throat.

"From everything we've seen and heard, these aren't your run of the mill raiders. I have a hunch they didn't do it for a ransom."

"I see," replied Trudy. "That does sound like the kind of thing someone would go to Nick Valentine for."

"Nick Valentine?" asked Frank.

"He runs a detective agency in Diamond City. Never met him myself, but he's pretty good at what he does I'm told."

He wondered if the man bore any relation to the Nick Valentine he remembered.

Captain Widmark had brought in a detective of that name from Chicago PD, in a vain effort to bring down Eddie Winter. The case had ended in humiliation and Valentine last he had heard, threatened to turn in his badge out of disgust for the Department of Justice and their handling of the Mob Boss.

He remembered the bitterness in the air of Cambridge Station when the case was closed.

"What's the road to Diamond City like?" asked Wally.

"Dangerous," Trudy answered in a word. "Try to avoid Lexington, try to avoid Cambridge too."

"Why's that?"

"There's ferals around Lexington by the hundreds. It's probably the biggest reason you don't find many honest folk around these parts, at least not as full time residents. There's also a raider gang holed up in the old Corvega Plant."

"As for Cambridge," she continued, "the place is a hive of super mutants. Anybody who can survive over there is more likely to shoot first and ask questions later."

"I'm sorry, did you say 'super mutants'?"

She regarded him curiously and not for the first time. "You know, big green monsters. They're as violent as they are stupid. You're not from around here, are you?"

Frank shrugged. "You could say that."

Her eyes dropped to his arms as if noticing them for the first time. "You're all vault dwellers?"

"In a manner of speaking," said James.

"That explains a lot. What vault are you from?" Trudy asked before putting away a spoon full of the food.

"Vault 111."

The utensil in her mouth froze. He could see the woman tense up.

"Something wrong?" asked Frank.

It took a moment for her to answer. "They say the area around Vault 111 is haunted."

Wally scoffed, it was a guttural sound. "I would think this whole world is haunted. Just one big damn cemetery."

"Look, word is that something's up with that place. Most people in the area avoid it like it's a crater, but every now and then, some scavver crosses the river and they are never heard from again. Even the gangs in the area avoid it."

The three exchanged looks.

"Hey Codsworth!" He hollered for the robot butler to come over.

The Mr Handy wasted little time in floating over. "Greetings Officer Dipietro, what I do for you?"

"Do you remember meeting anybody in Sanctuary before we got out?"

"I'm afraid I don't have anything in the memory banks for beyond the first ten years. Will that be all, sir?"

"It will for now, Cods."

"Hang on," she piped up when Codsworth returned to the diner kitchen. "Did Vault 111 just open or something?"

"Yes," replied James. "Look us up if you're on the other side of Concord."

He could see her shudder ever so slightly.

"I've heard stories about vaults opening up now and then. Sometimes the Wasteland kills them, other times they say you could follow a trail of bodies to the vault."

Awkward silence reigned for a moment when they all found themselves staring out the window.

"Still I'd like to see your home. Be nice to see another stop along the road that isn't Nuka World."

"What's in Nuka World?"

"More raiders. It's a got a good marketplace, but they treat the traders like animals there. Problem is, it's the quickest and safest way out west. Going through the Glowing Sea is still a death wish after two centuries and Dirtyham ain't much better."

"You mean Framingham?" James asked.

"I guess so, but there's not much left of that place and there's a crater right in the middle of the town. Story is that they dropped some sort of dirty bomb on the place to cut off Boston Proper from the rest of the Commonwealth."

They ate on, finishing what remained of their lunch. When it was done, she offered them some medical supplies and ammo.

The three of them marched down the road, with Codsworth lolloping along behind. They had gone north east from the intersection passed by a drive-in theater before they turned onto Lexington Road. As he remembered, this was the other half of Minuteman National Historical Park.

Here the rusted chain link fences gave way to fences of stone that stood oblivious the ravages of time. Beyond them, dense overgrowth reclaimed many of the open fields that had been made to look as they had in Paul Revere's day.

Further down, the foliage was even thicker, surrounding the few houses within view. Leaves fallen from the trees coated the landscape and painted it varying shades of red, orange, yellow and brown.

Along the wayside, trails to the important sites occasionally branched out to places beside the road. The last of these included a parking lot. Beside it, was a visitor's center half concealed in the woodland.

The scene along the turnpike edge of the park, was pretty damned surreal. Cars and trucks were stalled along the broken asphalt. They were backed up in traffic almost as if they were frozen in time. Up ahead, he could see the railroad crossing.

A south bound NH&M freight train had stalled over the crossing when the bombs fell. They passed the parked train, and turned onto Massachusetts Avenue.

That was when they saw Lexington.

The city stood out against the surrounding wilderness much like a laser burn on otherwise reasonably healthy skin.

A gust of wind hit them from the direction of the town.

"Whew," Wally whistled. "Been a long since I smelled anything like that. Guess there's really nothing like rotting corpses in the sun."

* * *

 **Preston**

He woke up from a nap on a couch in the living room with a start. His eyes opened and he saw a figure towering over him. Preston flashed with panic for a moment until he registered the familiar outline of Sturges.

"Morning sunshine," he drawled. "Wondered where you scurried off to."

Preston could only groan.

"Come on Preston, a settlement needs your help man."

"Where?" He suddenly felt a little more awake.

"Here, they're having a town meeting down the street and we're the guests of honor."

"Us?"

Sturges nodded. "You've been around the Commonwealth more than any of us have. At least among those who made here anyway. I've been spending most of my time surveying, so I'll brief everybody on needs if you tell us about the area."

He had wanted to spend more time out and about getting to know the neighborhood, but when exhaustion claimed everyone else in his group save Sturges, it was not long before he felt the need to crash.

Preston got up from the couch, yawning. It had been far too long since he could shut his eyes in peace, and for that he felt just a little bit grouchy.

He looked around the room again as he followed Sturges out. The house wasn't bad all things considered. Then again, a good place to settle in Preston's eyes were not held to very high standards at all.

A short walk down the street brought him to an old two-story brick building which looked to be holding up rather well. Looked very much like the Museum of Freedom though it was rather small and took up maybe half the area in comparison. In front, he could make out a sign for the North Bridge Visitors Center.

They were waiting for him in what looked like a small briefing room. The new residents of Sanctuary Hills lined the rows of benches.

"I don't know what to say, except thanks for giving my people a place to settle." Preston opened up as he paced the floor.

Ned had taken three bullet wounds. One to the head, one near his heart, and a stray one had lodged in his lower spine. He would survive but would be very lucky to be able to walk again.

He looked around the crowd. "I'm Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen. Well, at least what's left of it. Hell, if the doctor here didn't bring Ned from the back from the dead, you could say that I am the Minutemen."

Behind him, Sturges and someone else in a vault suit brought in a blackboard. The former-vault dweller placed a piece of chalk in his hand.

Preston glanced at the empty board then back at the audience. He cleared his throat and spoke with his best officer's voice - as Colonel Hollis had called it.

"I've been asked to brief you on the surrounding area to the best of my knowledge." He started by drawing a crude representation of the rivers Sudbury and Assabet where they became the Concord. Above the junction, he drew a circle to represent Sanctuary.

"This is Sanctuary Hills," he drew a square across the river and used the chalk to point. "Here is Concord. The area is fairly secluded so it should be sometime before any traders take note, or raiders for that matter."

Preston drew an X to mark Lexington, then another to mark Olivia Air Force Base. Finally, he put one down for Nuka World in the west as an afterthought.

"The roads to most settlements of note are blocked by enemies. The raiders in Lexington might return here soon after word of this morning spreads." He indicated Lexington. "Chances are, they'll be the first to find out about this place. After that, it's only a matter of time before the others show up at our door."

He made a few marks along the river. "We'll need that time to establish ourselves. That means filling sandbags along the houses and digging in by the river crossings."

He tried to remember anything else of note that he had heard over the years. That was when he remembered Blake Abernathy. He drew a circle outside of Concord to represent the homestead.

There's one settlement in the area that will be on friendly terms with us. The Abernathy family, well it's more like a clan, would be more than happy to meet some people in the area looking to make an honest living. They have the biggest farmsteads around, and we'll want them on our side."

Preston tried to scratch his brain for more information but he couldn't remember anything else worth mentioning. The Minuteman turned to Sturges and nodded. "I believe it's your turn now," he told the handyman who grinned and accepted the chalk as he took over the room.

Preston took the seat that Sturges had occupied and thought about the farm.

The Abernathy's, as he recalled, were as solid as people in the Commonwealth came. Though the Minutemen were not often active this side of Lexington, the Abernathy's and their kinfolk had served with distinction for generations.

Blake Abernathy was the head of that farmstead or "headstead," as many in the ranks referred to the leaders of such settlements.

Before that, he served as a captain in the 2nd under Major Shaw. The regiment had been the first one to crumble when General Becker died. Infighting within high command was followed by mass desertions in an already manpower starved force when the meager flow of supplies stopped coming to many of the districts.

Abernathy's company like many other units were left to fend for themselves. Despite this, he rallied the remnants of 2nd Regiment and managed to keep road to Marlboro open for another two years before Nuka World fell to an influx of raiders that outnumbered them five to one.

Marlboro, once the anchor of their western frontier, ceased its support for the order and broke all official ties. After that, support for Colonel Hollis and his command was infrequent at best and they had to live off the land more often than not.

Some called it self-funding. Preston called it theft.

Sturges got his introduction out of the way and moved onto presenting his plans for making the land livible again. Preston felt himself drift off now and then even though he knew he needed to hear this.

He spoke of a plan for getting purified water pumped out of Vault 111 and connecting it to the neighborhood water pipes which he had heard were partially functional.

For electricity, he hoped to configure a power grid that would draw from the vault reactors through a connection above ground.

On food, he spoke of putting down fall crops that were preferable inside a greenhouse.

Preston Garvey did not fail to notice the looks on the faces of the prewar dwellers. Some listened intently, as if ready to pick up the shovel. Others though, just sat as if they weren't really there. For many, they may as well have been from another planet.

* * *

 **Let's talk about life outside the beaten paths of the Fallout universe.**

 **I could act like there is no intelligent life within the NE corridor between Boston and DC. I could say that the distance of more than 400 miles between point A and point B is a glowing sea, where anything that isn't flagged as essential or least protected dies on the road. Except that would be lazy as fuck on my part to act like that stretch of land is merely vertibird flyover country. I also lose out on a good many opportunities to depict an expansive and somewhat believable world.**

 **As much as I loved Fallout 4 (this wouldn't be a story if I didn't), the game has an unfortunate tendency to somehow bring out the pet peeves in virtually every kind of gamer. While some things made a decent amount of sense, one I can neither justify nor understand, is the lack of insight Fallout 4 had to offer on the rest of New England.**

 **Fallout 3 was a game that had plenty of reminders that life existed outside of territory covered by the game or DLC. Remember when all the characters from "The Replicated Man" came from somewhere off the reservation?**

 **Thats before I get started on New Vegas, where you can feel the importance of the battle for the Mojave. In that game, the significance of events goes far beyond the reaches of southern Nevada.**

 **That's why I'm charting my own territory. I want a story where characters can tell you where the caravans go, what runs the local economies, and how events in the familiar space will affect the surrounding countryside.**

 **I've been drawing up a map of North America with the help Alexeij. If you're familiar with his work, then chances are you've already gotten a sneak peak at what the payoff entails. At some point I might review the couple hundred locations that have already been put down, and offer a redacted and generally spoiler free link to the map.**

 **And now for this chapter's geography notes (damn this is getting long)...**

 **Minuteman National Historical Park is actually two regions. One section is north of Concord, the other is directly east and goes all the way to Lexington.**

 **On Nuka World, I looked around Google Maps a bit and concluded that the park would most logically be north of Framingham which I believe puts it about three hours of walking west of Sanctuary.**

 **Olivia Air Force Base, is an amalgam of Olivia station ingame and Hanscom AFB.**

 **Marlboro is Marlborough, Massachusetts with the last three letters shaved off the sign. You might say its a place where people in cowboy hats go to die.**

 **Are you still reading this essay? If so, let me know what aspect of local color you would like to see in expressed in a Fallout 4 story by review or pm.**


	6. What a glorious New World for America!

**Wally**

Wallace Kovacs felt a familiar fear as he and his group approached Lexington. Three men and a refitted Mr Handy moved in a skirmish line, their weapons at the ready.

Up ahead, was a city that was dead, though not dead enough if the things he had heard from Trudy were half true.

He had seen the bodies of the raiders that had died in Concord earlier that day when they scavenged the scene for supplies and military hardware. The intersection before the Museum of Freedom was painted with the blood of young hoodlums in tattered clothing with homemade guns that reminded him more than a little of Detroit.

There were more of those thieving punks here, operating out of the plant that loomed over the city like some ancient fortress over its subjects.

Lexington was not a company town like the ones he had grown up in back along the rust belt, but Corvega was never about subtlety, at least not outside of the plant. Even now the building in its faded pastel colors proclaimed near ownership of Lexington, and whoever held that plant could hold Lexington, or at the very least keep someone else from doing so.

Below the complex, other things lurked in the shadows.

He didn't want to believe that there were creatures out there mutated beyond humanity that wanted nothing more than to eat his flesh, but after seeing a mosquito the size of a dog, he tried his best to take nothing for granted.

Long ago in the Marines, he had been to places like this. They had always been somewhere far away though, where signs were written in Spanish and the distances were displayed in metric. Here they were in American.

Somehow, it didn't quite feel the same seeing those same signs in familiar English as they walked down the overgrown and neglected Massachusetts avenue.

He thought about the company he walked with. His comrades who were supposed to have his back through this town.

There was Frank, whom Wally had known since the badge came on. He was a man who despite a good career for someone fresh out of uniform was falling apart even before the bombs even fell. Once he ran out of things to lose, he more or less lost his shit and became hell bent on killing himself.

An honorable discharge sure as hell didn't make him any safer. In the police force, he was once considered one of the most reckless men to be found from Robbury up to Salem.

Some of the stories were exaggerated, Wally didn't doubt. For someone said to have kept playing Russian Roulette with his own life, it was hard to believe he was still in one piece.

Then there was James who was only a few stages behind in grief. The man had lost everything with the end of the world. For the most part, he was still functional, but Wally wasn't about to treat the army captain like his CO.

The man blindly lashed out and attacked him when he talked back at Sanctuary.

Nobody had to tell Wally it was a stupid thing to say. He knew little about the wife of James Rodgers, and even less about him. Wally had seen James a few times before it all happened, but never with her as far as he recalled.

All he'd known was that the yellow lady that nobody liked happened to be an absolute bitch to much of the neighborhood. That her husband was deployed was well known. He'd heard from someone that she was the daughter of some general's favorite hooker, which might have explained her marriage to an army officer.

She was well connected, no doubt about that. There was an air about her that reminded him of some of the officer wives he used to know. "Dependapotamus" they all called those creatures. There was something sad about seeing your old CO who you once treated as a surrogate dad married to some fat fuck who seemed to think the enlisted ranks owed her salutes. Not that she was the fat and useless type or anything. What she lacked in those factors she made up for in sheer demeanor.

It made sense now though that James was that traitor who the neighborhood housewives asked around about. Small wonder the man was a recluse when on leave. Wally couldn't help but wonder what was really in it James.

Was it ambition? Marrying foreigners was frowned on as a general rule. If that foreigner had slanted eyes and spoke 'Engrish,' some might even call it career suicide. And yet James was a captain and a mustang if he'd heard right.

Was it a problem with being in a healthy marriage? He'd seen a few engineers earlier in his career take a vacation to South America or even the Philippines after one too many embarrassments in the dating pool only to come back with a new wife maybe ten years younger. They used to laugh at those sad bastards over lunch breaks. Real American men didn't go hunting for brides in the third world.

And yet she was probably the one who wore the pants in that marriage. Weirder still, she was possibly a bit older too.

Officers who acted like James right now, and maybe even Frank tended to get a lot of their boys killed, and Wally intended to see himself through this fight like a professional. He would fight to win.

With every step his sixth sense seemed to feel more and more on edge. He could smell the decay that seemed to come from everywhere around him once they reached the Super Duper Mart.

Trudy had said that much of the city still belonged to the ghouls. He had heard mentions of them earlier.

From what he heard it sounded a hell of a lot like those old holofilms about zombies. It was a lifetime ago, or several depending on how you looked at it, when he had his own fantasies of living in a zombie apocalypse.

It sounded like lots of fun at the time. No mundane jobs, petty office bullshit or stupid city ordinances to rule his existence by telling him where to cross the street. Law would begin and end with the barrel of a shotgun. Undead monsters and asshole neighbors alike would tell God who sent them to their judgement.

Since then, two deployments, a career, a wife and a daughter had done much to change his opinion. Now it was one of the scariest things he could imagine.

This was the world he and his family found themselves in. He had built a life for himself and those he loved. In the blink of an eye, all he had cultivated all those years was gone save for Kayla and their Elsa. Had things been less dire, he might have stopped to praise god for sparing his family for a while.

But now, he was travelling down the road he took every morning to work, marching into the heart of Lexington knowing full well they could be ambushed anywhere, by things that threw mankind's natural place on the food chain in doubt.

If Concord was an indication, there were plenty of animals that gave as good as they got if not a little more. Could that be a reason for why the rest of humanity had yet to unfuck themselves after all that time?

They made it to the Lexington Commons before the trouble began.

It started with a low growl from some place he couldn't see that turned into a loud but pitiful hack. Without even a thought, Wally flipped off the safety of his shotgun.

He heard another growl, this time somewhere else. Then another. Then from behind him yet another. All the while, the unmistakable smell of death got closer and stronger.

Frank took a position to his right at 10 o'clock, and that was enough for his own training to kick in. The aged marine scanned the commons at the 2 o'clock position facing down Massachusetts avenue.

they waited as the noises around them seemed to get louder for whatever horrors that made them to show themselves.

After a few long seconds, a figure rushed out of a building, and stumbled down the steps landing knee first on the cracked sidewalk.

Frank leveled his shotgun at the thing as it tried to regain its footing. Before he pulled the trigger, he saw its face.

It was the face of something that had been human once. A face that didn't even seem to feel the blast tear away arm and shoulder.

It just kept trying to run towards him, the remaining arm flailing wildly while leaping on shaky legs that could barely stand.

Wally never would have thought they could still run just as fast as they once could.

He pumped his shotgun, and fired at the monster once it was almost close enough to touch him. This time though, Wally aimed for the head and fired.

At that range, The blast didn't just separate the head. It practically turned it into dust. What remained of the zombie fell down from the knockdown power of the shot.

He looked around, and saw another one making a mad dash for Frank. A beam from his Gauss rifle hit it, and promptly turned to a charred ruin whatever hadn't been lost to the heat of the charge.

Another one came behind the first, which took a shotgun blast from Wally to its legs. It collapsed under its own weight, and tried to crawl onward until a single crank round from Frank burned it's decomposing head to a crisp.

Wally could hear another one coming off to his right, and turned just in time to see it fly out of a jewelry store and right into his path. It landed in front of him and the muzzle of his gun.

Frank pumped his shotgun and fired before it could get up, with the force of the blast nearly tearing the ghoul in two.

He scanned the scene around him for more hostiles, but it was over quicker than it had started. Five dried up zombies lay still around them with no casualties in their band.

"Codsworth? You alright?" James asked his robot.

Well, unless that was supposed to count as a casualty. One ghoul managed to tear away the new arm they had mounted from the Gutsy earlier in Concord.

"Tis but a scratch," replied the Mr. Handy with a voice as chipper as it were stoic.

"A scratch Codsworth? Your arm's off."

"No it isn't," retorted the mechanical butler. "At least not my arm."

"It's a military grade arm," argued James. "I don't have the tools to fix that kind right now."

"Oh well, Master James. You'll recall I've had worse. I may be only have a little Mr. Gutsy in me, but I can take whatever Lexington throws my way."

"Hey Guys!" Frank called out in a hushed but urgent tone, while he looked though the sights on his rifle.

"Yeah Frank?" asked Wally.

"I got a visual on the sky bridge. Ugliest suit of power armor I've ever seen."

Wally looked in the direction of the Gauss Rifle, and sure enough there was a figure on the bridge most likely staring back at them, and big enough that it had to be in a suit.

They spread out and shifted positions.

Suddenly the figure in power armor lifted what could only have been a heavy weapon and he saw other movement behind it...

"Shit, Fatman!" Frank cried. "Duck and Cover!"

They scattered even further as flashes emerged from the bridge and bullets kicked up dust.

"Contact! Follow me to the alley!" Frank loosed a round in the direction of the bridge and ran like a rabbit for the cover of the alley.

As they ran, they could hear the almost cartoonish sound of a Fatman in action. He had almost reached the safety of the alley, when saw the surroundings in front of him bathed in light before getting knocked face first into the gravel.

Next thing he knew, the noise around him blended together into a confused hum that hit his eardrums with fury. He opened his eyes, and saw the colors of the alley in blurs. He saw James, Frank, and Codsworth moving slowly around like faceless ghosts. Time itself was almost at a standstill.

James turned his head to look at him, and his boyish face began to regain some clarity as he began to creep in Wally's direction. After a few long steps, James bent down in front of him and mouthed a few words he couldn't understand.

Wally could feel himself being lifted by an arm. Time seemed to speed up just a little bit, and the sounds became more distinguishable.

This time he could vaguely hear Frank shouting "Go!"

So he put a foot forward, and then another. As James tugged on his arm, everything came back to him.

He began to run with the group down the alley until they reached the Worthen road, where the shopping centers began to meet the apartment complexes.

They found themselves at a basketball court where the two zones met, gasping for breath while crouched behind a concrete barrier. With all the noises around them, it was if Lexington itself had been given a rude awakening.

Whatever else emerged from beyond their line of sight attracted the rhythmic fire of lower caliber bullets. Some turret most likely.

He saw a raider emerge from a building, trying to follow the sounds of battle. It was a lone individual, and not a very smart one. Had the raider scanned the environment before stepping out in the open, he might have lived.

Instead, three ghouls were on him before he could get off two shots.

They could hear the young raider scream, as the monsters ripped him into pieces, and tore into his body.

Wally wanted nothing more than to turn away from the sight, but for some reason he could not move his eyes from a scene that would likely keep visiting him the rest of his life.

"Time to run," said James.

And so they did. Amidst the chaos along the road they escaped the heart of the Lexington shit show using a pair of rusted out twelve wheelers to hide themselves. The raiders and their turrets would be too busy fighting off the undead, for any of them to matter, but no need to tempt luck.

Before long, they lost their pursuers. A few blocks north, they stopped to catch their breath.

After a few moments, Rogders looked at him with baleful eyes.

"Alright Wally, The fuck we go now?" growled James.

Wally didn't bother to make eye contact, instead choosing to navigate the GPS on his pip-boy. It was a trick his boss used to pull whenever some bean counter from corporate, would stride into office like he had any kind of pull in the plant.

"Jalbert Brothers disposal. We'll have to swing around the town to the west and follow the railway."

"Seriously? A fucking junkyard?" James was the first to pipe up.

Wally nodded. "We and some of the boys at the plant had a few arrangements going on with the owners. Got a lot of things squirreled away, things that I'd say are worth a bit more right now."

"What kind of value we talking Wally?" asked Frank.

He felt himself grin as he looked at Frank. "You might say the very keys to Concord and Lexington. At least some of the more important bits." The former cop would probably blow a gasket, when he understood what they came for.

"You know Wally, most people go there to dump things. Not pick them up." Frank chided. "What do you have in there that could concern Concord?"

 _Oh, he's in for a surprise then,_ Wally cackled inwardly. "Let's just say me and some of the boys at the plant all had rainy day fund so to speak."

The former cop looked away and sighed, but said nothing. No words were needed. The truth of the matter was that beneath the pristine exterior of Sanctuary Hills was some pretty rotten stuff, and Frank knew it. Now all the idyllic beauty was stripped away, and with that the need for people to hide their true nature.

What Vault-Tec really saw in all of them, he still wasn't quite sure. For such a selective process there were some pretty shady people who made it through. True, some like Robert Reuven were slick operators who hid their dirty laundry from the world at large, but there were others like the Whitfields who seemed to practice criminal law with an emphasis on the former rather than the latter.

In his family's case, they started by approaching Elsa. She had been expelled from CIT in the spring of 2077 for "Un-American activities. After a few months of self destructive living and no doubt finding a place on every agency watch list, she somehow secured three slots in vault 111. There wasn't too much he had to do by the time the representative came to ask him and Kayla to sign the forms.

He made a grim smile. By what rights did Frank have to judge him, or his family?

They made their way to the tracks without incident where the train had stopped. It was a long mixed consist, that could only have come from Canada that carried everything from timber to ores, to even military equipment being returned from the front.

But most importantly, it had carried food meant to alleviate the constant food shortages that plagued Boston. It was easy to tell which rail cars held food. Boxcar after boxcar had long been torn open by looters after the fall of the bombs.

They would have looted the military railcars no doubt, except the security measures were not something that could be overcome by just anyone. Of course there were other ways in for someone crafty enough, but he didn't think the locals were much about hard work after seeing the state of Lexington.

"Hey James," Frank pointed to an armored boxcar. "Any idea what kind of cargo these is in here?"

"Hard to say," replied James. "A lot of resources had to get shuffled between here and Canada. I know General Babcock and his people were lobbying the Pentagon for T-60's. I heard one of the logistics guys saying there were about enough up here for to refit a battalion then lend out the T-45 suits for to the guard."

Frank frowned at the mention of Babcock. "Pretty sure the guard got both, in the end If I recall."

"That they did, Frank. He probably would have gotten them by Halloween if the situation was just another scare. Still had a cow though I'm told."

"Kind of ironic," The former sergeant grunted. "He was the one of the most vocal supporters of using Power Armor for riot control wealth side, as I remember."

The Counterinsurgency doctrines, or COIN strategy as the military called it for decades, had more or less gone by the wayside when China invaded Alaska. As much he disliked the ideas in practice, the new PR strategies favored by Chase, Babcook and the like were a disaster.

The hearts and minds approach, was generally successful in the civilized parts of the world like Canada, and yet General Babcock managed to fuck up the annexation of "little America." Had it not been for the extraordinary output and outspoken support from the president, he would have been fired for what happened in Edmonton, but the brass had grown arrogant in their careers, especially after the Geneva Convention ceased to matter.

When he was in the Marines, the counterinsurgency doctrine was freshly re-codified in the later years of the South Caribbean War after some first rate fuckups turned what should have been a one year occupation into a five year ordeal.

The Colombians had long resented the local influence of American companies like Frutas International, Agricola and even Nuka Cola. After the election of a Chinese-backed socialist, the Pentagon had feared a domino effect that would ultimately become a communist scramble for Latin America. Cuba and Ecuador were already exporting revolution. Cuba for the Russians and Ecuador for China.

When the incumbent president refused to back down, a popular uprising overwhelmed the presidential guard at the Nariño palace, and lynched the president from a lamp post in the plaza.

Civil war broke out between the core supporters of National Unity and virtually everybody else, before splintering into a dozen factions. It wasn't long before the marines invaded Colombia in to protect the lives of US nationals not to mention Colombia's nicer neighbors.

A few years later, The spread of communism was cut down to size. The country stabilized under new management and everybody went back to attending mass, drinking Nuka Cola, and still resenting America.

Wally frowned as they walked alongside the tracks. As they did, he found himself staring at his pipboy.

"Guys, you think the three of us could find a way to open army cars for the way back?"

James stopped for a moment and looked at the inter-modal containers with their government markings.

"You know," Frank piped up. "taking from the dead was one thing, but I'm not sure how I feel about military property."

"Sweet Jesus Frank," Wally retorted. "Where in the zombie apocalypse movies does that keep the hero from getting his survivor's inheritance? We've already looted what I think used to be someone's private property to get the not so legal gun on your back, and we're going to end up mining everything from here to Sanctuary just to survive."

James stopped for a moment, looking thoughtfully at the train.

Frank heaved a sigh. "I know you're right Wally, but fuck. I hate this."

Wally rolled his eyes. "Really officer? You seem pretty comfortable doing things of questionable legality when it suits you. If that man wasn't a dealer, Boston PD would be doing it's best to keep you outside of court."

The Policeman's eyes narrowed. "Do you think those two would have let someone slap the cuffs on them?"

He shook his head. "Not at all, but that's beside the point."

"Ok, pal what is?"

"My point is that everybody else has the same justification you used to have in deciding when we should you know, fear for our life. Hell, now that I think about it, who the fuck do we justify our selves to?"

"Maybe God?"

Wally chuckled. "I like the idea, but what version of God are we talking about?"

"How about the one that influenced law in the first world?"

Only a dumb ass or a commie would dispute that God tended to elevate the godly parts of the world over the rest of the animals.

"Hmmm, fair point. But what would God want us to do out here?"

"Obey his commandments Wally." Frank didn't hesitate in his response.

"And what about the people who don't give a shit?" Wally gestured in the direction of Lexington.

The former policeman looked down at the ground, and then at a looted boxcar before he spoke. "I believe Vault-Tec already called on us to recolonize the world. The orientation more or less said we need to uphold common law by any means necessary until we have contact with any government authorities."

"I believe they also suggested that even government property is fair game until then, assuming they're still around somewhere." James commented dryly for the first time.

"As far as I can see gentlemen," the old marine gestured outwardly. "I think we are the government. How about we consider anything county, commonwealth or federal as our inheritance? I mean, we've paid for it all our lives with tax money and military service goddammit. I don't think anyone else out here can say that."

"Provided of course it doesn't have automated defenses in working order," said Frank.

"Let's get back to Remington on that one," he decided cautiously. "Had a talk with the doc this morning, while you two where out. A lot of the vaults were placed near military installations, and we might have a few IFF codes lying about. That is assuming that the other Vault-Tec staff didn't disappear with them. He also seemed to suggest we had a few things only the President would have."

The looks on their faces were priceless.

"Tell me that doesn't include any place with nukes," James was the first to find his wits.

"Maybe not us," he answered. "Remington says a general from Strategic Air Command visited the West Virginia offices. That can only mean one thing."

Frank shook his head. "I hope to god we don't have those kind of leftovers lying around."

"Well, it's only ten or so miles to the nearest silo," James remarked glumly. "Wonder if another vault has that one."

"Capital idea master James," the Mr. Handy piped up for the first time in the conversation. "I suppose we ought to see how the other vaults are doing after we find young Shaun."

Frank nodded in approval. "Let's ask around when we get to Fenway. There's got to be others just like us, I hope."

Wally looked at his pip boy and mentally calculated the route to 'Diamond City' as they called Fenway Park these days."Let's try to make it before nightfall, see if we've inherited the full mess from Uncle Sam."

 **Author's Note: It's been a long fucking time, I know. So long that a new Fallout title was announced since (honestly feeling some mixed opinions so far). This chapter and many more are overdue. Next one is already in the works and I'll try and see if I can get that pumped out a little quicker (might prioritize an update for Bring Your Convictions before that one comes.)**

 **In the time since, I've been through a lot. I** **had a couple very busy jobs that** **didn't really give me the free time I used to have. There's also been an abundance of distractions in my free time from friends to room mates, some binge drinking and some kinda fucked up relationships. Oh, and now my ass is back in school.**


End file.
